Arrearage Testimony
by Invaderk
Summary: Mako is determined to protect his brother and overcome poverty, no matter the cost.
1. Chapter 1

**A/n:** Hello there! Like many people, I have a love/hate relationship with Mako. I think his character is super interesting, but that some of his actions in season one of Korra were... regrettable, to say the least. I started this fic after seeing episode three, where Mako said that he did some work for the gangs back in the day. It was supposed to be a oneshot, but then became a character study that covers some major events that take place between the death of the brothers' parents and the end of season one. This fic will be five chapters, uploaded at a relatively quick pace!

The story itself is written in a sort of funky way, with dialogue saved for only the most critical moments. I was afraid that people might not get why I did it that way - I tried to model it after witness testimony, with very factual statements superimposed over the actual message... I may have completely failed at this. But if not, hooray! Let's see how it goes.

Crit and comments are always appreciated. Good luck!

A thousand thanks to wherewulf, my wonderful beta. You're one of a kind, and your comments are always just what I need.

**Warnings** – **This story includes either explicit or implied:** Character death, poverty, abuse, child abuse, non-con, dub-con, prostitution, drug use, drug abuse, swearing, sex, underage sex, imprisonment. Note that sex scenes are not described to smut-level, but include before-and-after descriptions that are notable enough to earn a warning. Please feel free to PM me before reading if you have any other questions/concerns!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing and make no profit.

Happy Reading!

* * *

_**Arrearage Testimony**_

_**Arrearage**__ (noun, __\-ij\__) – A legal term for the part of a debt that is overdue after missing one or more required payments. The amount of the arrears is the amount accrued from the date on which the first missed payment was due. The term is usually used in relation with periodically recurring payments such as rent, bills, royalties (or other contractual payments), and child support._

xXx

At eight years old, Mako learned a lot more about the world than he cared to know.

Everything before eight years old was a simple, modest life that he did not lament because he never knew any better. Every day his mother dressed in the same jumpsuit and kissed her sons goodbye before going to work in Earthbending construction. Once she had left, Mako's father prepared for the three other family members a small breakfast, then broke the day into intervals of play and homeschooling. Mako could live with this. By nature he was very curious, outspoken, and affectionate, which made him both an excellent student and doting brother. In the rare circumstances where Mako's father found work Lightning Bending in the power plant and had to leave his sons home alone, Mako adopted the role of guardian. He made sure the stove was off, kept Bolin away from sharp objects, and never let strangers into the house. Through the first seven years of his life, Mako learned the basics — how to play nice, a little bit of Firebending (his father said he was a natural), how to read, and even some math, for which he had an affinity.

At eight years old, Mako learned about loss and terror. He learned about police officers. He had thought that police people were mean and scary, but the woman who pried him away from his motionless parents and escorted him to the hospital was very nice. She didn't smile very much, and she had a scar on the side of her face that Mako tried not to look at too much, but she was not upset with him. She was upset, for sure, but not at him. She even let him keep the scarf his father had been wearing when the Firebender attacked them, even though it was far too big and hung down by his knees. Mako saw this lady several times—that first day, and then a few days later when she came to interview him about the man who had hurt his parents, and then when she picked he and Bolin up and brought him to their new home.

Mako learned what an orphanage was, and how it was hard to sleep with so many children around, and how his brother did not understand that they would not see mommy and daddy again. Mako learned about discipline, the means by which the orphanage bosses made sure that nobody took extra food at dinner. Two years later, after the head of house told him that he—and only he—had been adopted, Mako learned to tie knots and escaped out the third-story window with his brother clinging to his back, leaving a long rope of bedsheets as evidence. Mako learned about real estate, when he took his brother and ran away to their house, only to find that someone else was living there.

Then Mako learned what it was like to be hungry. He had been hungry before, if his mother made a small dinner or when the people at the orphanage wouldn't let him eat his fill, but never like this. He was _hungry_, cripplingly hungry, so that the aching in his belly made him impatient when his brother cried and cried and cried. After rummaging through a restaurant's garbage bins, be and Bolin both learned about food poisoning. Nobody wanted to hire a ten-year-old boy for work, first because he was underage and second because he had neither the strength for hard labor nor the knowledge for skilled labor. For a while he tried to earn money by performing Firebending, but the few yuans he collected were hardly enough to purchase a few mouthfuls of bread and clean water.

He tried fishing, too. He imagined that it would be an efficient means of feeding his family (especially since he could more or less cook his catch), but after his first attempt Mako learned that fishing in Yue Bay and the surrounding bodies of water were only allowed by permit. When he tried fishing late at night, he learned that these areas were patrolled by guards with nothing better to do than threaten to beat potential fishers.

Eventually Mako found a system that worked. In talking to some of the other kids who hung around Republic City Station, Mako learned about a single shelter that was open three days a week and served meals to people in need. Immediately Mako collected his brother, gathered up their few belongings (a few picture books, a stuffed platypus bear, and a knife that he had found discarded in the park water fountain) in their blanket, and headed to the shelter. Three days of the week (every other day, and then two without) they were able to eat enough to sustain them until next time, and slept in a soft cot amidst a group of other people). They even had showers, which saved them the embarrassment of getting caught bathing in the park in the middle of the night.

During the day, Mako took Bolin to the public library. He couldn't get a library card because he didn't have parents to sign the responsibility waver (or identification for that matter), but as long as they stayed in the building, they could use the books all day. Mako taught Bolin to read; not only was this a critical skill (or so his father had always said), but he found that disappearing into other worlds took his thoughts away from the forlorn growling of his stomach. Bolin liked books about animals and refused to leave the children's section, where he would stay and read very basic stories about fire ferrets and flying bison from open to close.

Mako particularly loved stories about the Avatar. He read about Aang and the founding of Republic City, about the war, and about how he brought peace to the world. Avatar Aang was only alive for the first few years of Mako's life, but Mako liked to imagine that if Avatar Aang were still around, he could help him and his little brother and all the other hungry kids find food and people to take care of them. He imagined that the new Avatar might already be learning the elements, and would someday come and help him practice Firebending and teach Bolin Earthbending (the latter's skills had only recently come out). Whenever the brothers were by the bay, Mako would peer across to Avatar Aang Memorial Island and make a silent wish.

But these were fantasies, of course. Mako tried not to let his heart attach to the idea that anyone was ever coming to help him. So far his hopes had lead to disappointment and anger. Instead of dwelling on these stories, Mako forced himself to put down the histories and turned instead to math books. These not only made sense to the young boy, but could also be applied in everyday situations. Once, while buying dumplings, he calculated the tax and realized that the grocer had short changed him half a yuan. The grocer had told Mako that he was wrong, that he couldn't possibly know better than an experienced grocer, and struck him about the ears before chasing him out of the store… but Mako had been right, and vowed never to let an adult outsmart him again.

The library was a safe house during the day, where he could get snacks for little to no money, but during the night the librarian had to kick them out. Mako spoke with the kind old man on my occasions (the old man didn't seem to mind the brothers' excited questions, and he told stories without even eyeing Mako's dirty clothes). The man almost seemed sad to see the brothers totter out at closing time.

In the evening they mingled with the other kids, running about for a game of kickball or gossiping about their latest shenanigans. Bolin, who had an almost startling ability to make friends, often played with the kids until well after dark, conversing with pretty girls without even a hint of embarrassment. Mako, daunted with the constant equation of finding tomorrow's meal, was not quite so outgoing as his little brother; he sat back and watched, sparing conversation only to those who initiated it.

Anyone caught trying to steal food or money from another kid was fair game for fighting. Luckily this only happened to them once, and was not likely to happen again; Mako spotted someone picking a yuan out of Bolin's pocket, jumped him, wrestled it out of his hands, and had to be dragged off of the thief to keep from seriously harming him. Mako tried to keep himself and his brother out of trouble, but sometimes tempers unraveled when food was scarce. Nobody blamed him for protecting his family. Better still, nobody tried to steal from the brothers after that.

At night they slept on the outskirts of the station, in a hidden groove between two tall buildings. Mako had found it while picking through a dumpster at the end of the alley where the backs of three apartment complexes met. At the junction of two, there was a gap between the walls that was sealed off at the far end so that shoppers on the other side of the building needn't look into the dingy alleyway while they ambled from shop to shop. Once Bolinlearned how to put a roof over their heads—his Earthbending training was limited to what he could learn by watching other street kids (and his brother's Firebending)—they turned the gap into a makeshift shelter into a lockable door. Through the thick walls they could sometimes hear the goings-on within the shops, and kept quiet during business hours lest they be forced out of their new home.

Every day was a little different, but each ran along the same general scheme. Some days they ate enough and kept warm and happy, while others were not so successful. Win or no win, Mako said to his brother, every day they were going to try.

This went on for four years, with the brothers educating themselves during the day and hiding from the gangs at night. In wintertime they hid from the cold, in summer from the sun. They were hungry, yes, but the shelter's lukewarm meals kept them fed enough. When Mako hit his growth spurt at twelve, his appetite tripled and the shelter workers began to sneak him extra meals when the managers weren't looking. Soon he had grown out of his clothes and had to spend precious money on a new shirt and pants.

Then there were other distractions, ones he didn't tell his little brother about. Long after Bolin had fallen asleep, Mako lay awake with his mind and body restless. The growth spurt had been a threat to survival, a nuisance that left him hungry even when they had a relatively large meal. After years of scant portions and unpredictable eating patterns, one learned to ignore hunger of the regular sort. The trouble was that, at twelve, he had developed a sort of secondary hunger that was harder to ignore (and almost impossible to explain). At first Mako thought there might be something wrong with him. His mind was distracted from survival, drawn to chasing the skirts of passers-by and blushing over the ideas in his head. To address this problem he returned to the library, sneaking off to the human development section once Bolin had buried himself in a set of Earthbending scrolls.

Mako quickly learned that he wasn't falling apart (as he had feared), and that what he was going through was apparently one of the most normal things in the world. Quite the opposite of his fears, he was moving out of boyhood at last. Unfortunately, nobody had thought to give him this information before he had fallen into a semi-panic, reading through chapter after chapter in a desperate attempt to play catch-up. Suddenly the vulgarities put forth by many of the other orphans made sense. And though Mako found some peace in the fact that these books could fill in the gaps, he wished more than ever that he had someone he could talk to about it. Normally when he needed answers he asked the librarians, or the other kids. But for some reason these matters in particular remained strangely hushed, as if the topic were disgraceful unless discussed with parents (the latter was only an assumption—they had to learn it from _somewhere_). Even the texts, his makeshift mentors, treated the matter quite clinically, impersonally, with a strange air of forbidding. In the long term these lessons helped, but they did not stop the immediate symptoms.

During one sleepless night a few weeks after his research, Mako slipped out from the alcove and wandered into the station, where he often heard peoples' voices late at night. He had known for years that the "big" kids — usually the older ones, from his age to sixteen or so, who he only recognized from their regular appearances at the shelter — congregated in the late evening to do whatever they wanted while the crowds were away. They smoke and drank and swapped stories, a half dozen of them at a time, sometimes blasting music loud enough to wake Mako and Bolin before the police inevitably chased them off. Tonight they were at ease, lounging around at the feet of Fire Lord Zuko. Mako spent several nights appraising them, usually sitting in the shadow of the nearest building's facade and watching whatever events took place. If the group knew that he was there, they didn't mind very much. They mingled without any of Mako's hesitation, chatting amongst each other, laughing, kissing their partners. They were a bit vulgar at times, using language that Mako didn't dare around adults (in fact he had learned this lesson the hard way, after calling a police officer a rather nasty name and earning himself a kick in the shins).

After a few nights of quiet observation, someone finally decided to approach the kid sitting by himself in the dark.

She introduced herself as Nikka. Nikka was three years Mako's elder, and one of the night crowd's ring leaders. A non Bender (though born of Waterbending heritage, she pointed out), she picked fights with the other kids and spoke about the world as if she knew it personally. For some reason she took an interest in Mako, having seen him about with his little brother in tow and watched his overlarge scarf trail down by his waist. Nikka pulled him up from his seat, tugged him over to the rest of the group, and soon Mako became a regular member of the group. His first cigarette brought about a good deal of coughing on his part and entertainment for the rest of the group ("Not quite so tough, are ya, new guy?" said one member). Eager to assimilate with the rowdy bunch, Mako joined them late at night when the city slept and crept off to bed in the hours before dawn, feeling only somewhat guilty that he was leaving his brother alone (Bolin was a sound sleeper and likely didn't know the difference). And anyway, he was just a shout away from the sleeping space.

As a group member Mako spoke with Nikka's same authority, though only when he was sure of the topic at hand. In conversation on things he didn't know, he was silent but attentive, listening eagerly for something that might help him conquer poverty. He laughed at crude jokes and teased the other kids when they teased him, sometimes smoked but stubbornly declined the invitation to drink (in case his brother should need help). The others, he felt, had let this life overtake them. They spoke freely of dreams they never intended to chase — one wanted to be a professional Bender, some wanted to get rich, and others wanted to find a place where they fit in. Some of them declared that they enjoyed living the nomadic life. They were free, without materialistic wants and petty obligations weighing them down. Many of the oldest (or those who could pass as older) had found work doing odd jobs or picking pockets and moved on over time. At twelve, Mako learned about the various gangs that ran the city, and how some of the teens associated with them when times were particularly rough. He learned that they employed underage folks for different jobs, and that the jobs could turn out a lot of cash at the personal risk and expense of the employee.

Hanging out at night left him tired during the day, but being around people his age (and older) gave him a strange sort of satisfaction. Nikka had especially captured his attention, with her apparent knowledge of everything from the inner workings of the Triad to how the government ought to alter the stock market. She stood with her back straight and her shoulders squared, and when she walked her long ponytail swayed down the length of her back. There was something strange about her, though. Often she didn't come to their nightly meetings, or arrived late looking like a ruffled mess. Nobody seemed to think twice about her behavior, and Mako began to wonder if everyone knew something that he didn't. He never asked. In due time he would know, but for now he was content to talk and listen.

Yet still the itch remained. It was not until later, after about a month of sneaking around behind his brother's back, that Mako found himself alone at the station. There had been times when there were few to no people present, especially when there were rumors of night work at the factory and the older teens ran for the job. Mako sat at the base of the statue for a while, picking at the blades of grass that had pushed their way up through the concrete. He hadn't been able to sleep anyway. It was the shelter's off night, and Mako had given whatever scraps he could find to his brother under the pretense that he himself had eaten earlier.

The sound of a slamming door roused him out of a semi-trance, and Mako looked up in time to see a satomobile peel down the road. A moment later, Nikka was walking toward him with her sole bag of possessions slung over one shoulder, the lit end of her cigarette casting her face in amber. Once she reached him, she explained that she was supposed to have work but that the job never happened. And though she did not explain further, Mako understood that he would have a partner in hunger come tomorrow. They eyed each other for a few moments, Nikka flicking the butt end of her smoke while Mako looked up from his place on the ground. Then she offered him a hand, hoisted him to his feet, and asked him to walk.

Keeping within running distance to Mako's shelter, they wandered just a little further than normal. Nikka was oddly silent tonight. She smoked her cigarette down to her fingertips and squashed the end into the dirt with her heel. More than once they made sidelong eye contact and broke it, an unusual gesture. Mako, who had been on-guard since recognizing the satomobile to be that of a gang member, finally asked if she worked for the Triple Threat Triad. She said yes. He asked what she did. She replied "stuff". Quietly they walked.

Finally, after an uncharacteristic silence, Nikka stopped and tugged him into an adjacent alleyway. At first he was alarmed and for a crazy moment thought she was going to pull a knife on him (as if he had anything to offer). Instead she did the only thing that could have surprised him more. She pressed his head between her palms and kissed him on the mouth. Mako broke it and stumbled backward until his shoulders bumped the brick wall, throwing his arms up before him in a defensive Firebending stance and stammering in confusion. He demanded to know what she thought she was doing. In turn, Nikka stared blankly at him for almost a half minute. Then she took her bag from her shoulder and dropped it to the ground.

"You asked what I do," she said. "Would you like me to show you?"

Astounded, Mako looked at her again. Since he first met her, he had thought her more beautiful than all the other girls around. But now that she was up close, he realized that she was just like him. Her skin stretched taut over her collar bones, her dirty hair hung limply across her face. He caught the smell of smoke on her breath as she stepped forward again. In the dim light the circles beneath her eyes were as dark as bruises, as dark as his.

Her hands sought the tie on his waistband, and as twelve-year-old Mako felt his limbs begin to tremble, he whispered an earnest, "Yes."

This relationship continued for almost a year, Mako serving as an attentive ear to Nikka's stories while she served him in other ways. First he felt immensely guilty and resisted her advances, consenting only when she insisted that she was acting of her own accord. Limited time and privacy meant that their secluded meetings were usually quick, but they kept the itch at bay and solved Mako's hunger-driven insomnia. Mostly he thought that Nikka was just looking for a gentle touch. Often times her torso was blotched with black and blue. One time he noticed a hand-shaped mark on her upper arm, but he kept this mouth shut. It was neither his place to speak nor to judge.

Aside from his escapades with Nikka, little else had changed. Mako turned thirteen, and Bolin surprised him on his birthday with a gift — the first he had received in years. The younger brother explained that, while Mako was looking for work one day, a shopkeeper had pulled up in a truck and offered Bolin a sizeable sum in exchange for helping him unload an order of fruit. Bolin had agreed, assisted, and with the earnings bought a small cake from the bakery and a book of math problems from the library's discounted sale bin. He hadn't wrapped the book, but understood by Mako's startled silence that its recipient was deeply touched. Mako scolded his brother for spending money on unnecessary things, pulled him into a tight hug, and then helped him devour the cake.

The months following Mako's thirteenth birthday marked a significant high point in his life thus far. That month Hiroshi Sato opened his second satomobile factory, and civilians from all over flocked to pick up shifts. Even Mako, whose ankles now stuck out from the hems of his pants, was able to convince the manager that he was sixteen and old enough to work. During the day he sent Bolin to the library (though he knew that Bolin often left and wandered around the old station with his pals) and went to work for a meager wage, shoveling coal into the furnace and keeping the flames lit.

At night, after he had spent the day's earnings on dinner and sent his brother to bed, he met Nikka at the usual place. It was a secret strictly between the two of them, held under the noses of the other kids without attracting any suspicion. Together they would walk along the darkened path, Mako listening as Nikka told him all about her latest plot. Tonight in particular, as the year was closing in on him, turned out to be significant. Evidently the satomobile industry affected Nikka's work as well, for she had almost saved enough to purchase a ticket to the Northern Water Tribe. Her mother had emigrated from there, she explained, and her best plan for starting over was to move back. Apparently there things were different. The tribe's people looked after one another up north.

Her excited voice drifted as they reached their sacred spot. The apprehension that he used to feel upon their arrival had long since faded, replaced by anticipation and a hyper-awareness of all his senses. Tonight Nikka took her time. She lingered where she generally sped, grabbing tufts of Mako's hair in each hand, biting a quiet murmur into the shoulder of his tunic. He was painfully gentle, almost reverent in his touches, too scared of triggering some terrible memory in her to force her closer. But it didn't matter. Nikka took advantage of her control, as if Mako was her only opportunity to seize it back, and by the time it was over neither of them could speak.

He should have known that this was the last time they would meet, but he didn't. And when Nikka didn't come back the night after, or the night after that, he began to worry that maybe the Triad had gotten sick of her. It wasn't until years later, after the late night crew had all disappeared or moved on, that he ran into one of the kids who had been closest to her (now grown up, though hardly in better shape than he had been in his teens) and asked if he ever heard from her. The man blotted his cigarette on the park bench and blew a breath of smoke into the air.

"There's nothin' _to_ hear," he said. "Goro — remember him? Scrawny little guy — anyway, he tells me she got knocked up and tried to run off to the homeland. Paid the captain of a merchant ship to take her on their trip north. But then I guess they had a run-in with some pirates and the whole boat was burned down. No survivors. Real shame."

So Nikka, too, had lost her fight against the City. Mako walked. Sometimes it was better not to ask.

The market dipped again about six months after Mako last saw Nikka. This time it was a supply-and-demand issue — everyone who wanted a satomobile owned one, which put a freeze on production and set a mass of people out of work. The lack of spending meant that the government imposed a funding cut, and one day Mako and Bolin arrived at the shelter to find that it had closed. Mako stopped hanging out with the night crew. With Nikka gone, he found that he couldn't deal with their hijinks anymore; it simply stopped being worth the time.

There was literally nothing either of the brothers could do to make an honest yuan. Both tried their hand at pick-pocketing, but Mako was no good at it and Bolin couldn't bear to take advantage of other people. Bolin had hit his growth spurt, and just as hunger had stricken Mako, so too it struck Bolin. Neither of them could get enough to eat, and the cold season had sent them shivering into the backmost corner of their shelter. Mako could only keep a hand-lit fire going for so long before he became too exhausted to Bend, and lighting a fire out of tinder almost surely meant attracting the police and losing their only shelter.

Mako turned fourteen. This year there was no celebration, no dinner, and certainly no cake. Instead the boys huddled up together under the Earthbended overhang, covered their ears with the red scarf, and willed themselves to sleep. A month passed in this fashion, and then another. Mako got caught stealing raw meat from the butcher and had narrowly escaped arrest. Each day became a worse fight than the previous, coupled up with the boys' growing exhaustion to leave them more helpless than ever. After three months of living on pilfered scraps, Mako realized that neither of them was going to make it through the season unless he did something. Both of them had withered down to the bones. Bolin had contracted a fluid cough that he could not shake. No manner of panhandling the tourists was going to bring them back to life.

Mako thought back to the night crew, to the kids who did shady jobs for the big gangs. Some of them had struck luck and moved up in the ranks. Others had called it a death sentence. Either way, Mako knew that he had run out of options. He left early one evening after sharing a dumpling with Bolin and putting him to sleep.

It took him a half hour to walk across town, into the Triad's territory, where he finally found the headquarters—a small, dingy-looking bar with a pair of bouncers posted out front. After a quick discussion, during which Mako stonily asked the bouncers if they knew of any odd jobs, one of the men nodded and disappeared through the door. When he returned, he beckoned Mako forward and the latter, unable to believe his luck, crossed the threshold to the headquarters. Inside, the place lost some of its bar-like semblance. There was a bar counter with a tall liquor rack in front of it. Around the wooden tables sat small clusters of people playing cards over drinks. Cigar and cigarette smoke hung around their heads like gray halos, but something about this bar stood far apart from those Mako saw around the city. Unlike those places, people glanced over their shoulders when someone unknown came through the door, and tonight they bored straight through Mako as if they knew he was no good.

The leader of the Triad, a middle-aged and impeccably-dressed man called Lightning Bolt Zolt, peered down at Mako over the bar counter and asked what kind of job he was looking for. Mako responded that he would do anything that paid. Zolt asked how old he was. Mako answered that he was eighteen. At this statement, Zolt's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. He glanced over to a broad-shouldered man at a nearby table, who shrugged and nodded, and then Zolt turned back to the boy.

"You've got perfect timing, kid. Taro's got a quick job for ya," he said. "Fifty yuans. What do you say?"

Mako was too taken aback to reply at first. Fifty yuans. He had never so much as held that much in his hand at one time. Hastily he agreed, and after sending someone off to relay a message Taro appeared at his side. They left together, Mako all but trembling at the prospect of making this much money. Fifty yuans! He and his brother could live for over a month with that kind of cash. When he asked the man what kind of work he'd be doing, the man assured him that it was easy enough and that they'd explain it when he got there.

They called the place "the clubhouse", but Mako realized soon after entering and hiking up to the second floor that this was no casual bar. It was, in fact, a several-room office space in the middle of an abandoned factory. The man ushered Mako to one of the first office rooms, where he said there was a storage of old vehicle parts that needed sorting and counting, but the truth had just clicked and Mako found himself in the midst of a new panic attack. When the man noticed that Mako had turned a queasy shade of green, he quickly grabbed the boy by his collar and hurtled him into the room. There were no vehicle parts, of course. Just a tiny, windowless room lit by a wall bulb and furnished with a wooden chair and thin mattress.

Mako came-to as the door closed behind him and the bolt slid definitively into place. He contemplated his options. He could set the room aflame and cause a panic, but then the man might let him die in here, too. The plaza was deserted and the room built with thick metal panels. Mako had just decided to charge the door when an unfamiliar voice reached his ears. He craned his head to listen, catching only blurred murmurs. Then the lock was unlatched, and Mako barely heard the Taro mutter "twenty minutes" before a stranger had slipped into the room.

"Hello," said the man.

Mako thought of Nikka, thought of the hand-shaped bruises across her body, and held his breath.

It was sometime later that he awoke face-down on the mattress and realized that he was quivering. At some point he had either passed out or blacked out — it didn't matter — but he was ready to pass the memory off as a nightmare until he tried to sit himself up. He became aware of things in fragments, as if his brain could not stand to piece it together all at once. For one, there was someone standing in the doorway. Mako lifted his head, focusing all his energy to his eyes until he recognized Taro. Then in his ears he registered a faint "Let's go, get up", and a moment after _that_ he was being hoisted up by his hair. It was this shock that brought Mako reeling back to life. With a shout, he scrambled upright only to realize that his legs would not hold him. His knees buckled as pain tore through him, worse than he could have predicted, sending him back down.

He took three tries to stand, one hand gripping his pants up around his waist while the other sought and failed to find a steady surface for balance. All the while, the man eyed him with unveiled disgust, tapping his foot as if Mako were causing him to miss his favorite radio show. Eventually Mako did stand up, gingerly poised on the balls of his feet. He tied off the knot in his belt, turned to face the man, and held up a hand.

"Fifty yuans," he said.

With a gruff laugh, the man reached into his pocket and withdrew a thick wad of money. He counted off a few, barely scraping into the pile, and slapped these bills into Mako's palm.

"Here's ten. Now scram."

Mako stared aghast at the ten yuans in his outstretched palm, unwilling to believe that he had been so doubly duped by this mobster scum. But when he demanded the remainder of his payment, Taro just laughed. Anger flared up in his chest, overpowering his exhaustion. Mako's hands balled up, and before he could stop himself he had Firebended directly at his superior. The man, being of course well nourished and in top shape, deflected the blow with a bored wave and struck Mako across his face. Gasping, he collapsed. The ten yuans went flying into the air before slowly raining back down to where he lay, sprawled across the metal floorboards. It was only when the man threatened to take back the payment did Mako gather up his money, pocket it, and retreat.

Clutching his bleeding nose, Mako stumbled into the first alley that he recognized and fell to his knees. He couldn't go home tonight, he couldn't face his brother, not like this. The night itself was balmy but chilled. Mako couldn't tell if he was trembling from the weather, but his muscles had set themselves into hyperdrive. One wave of nausea overcame him at once, and then another, and Mako barely made it to the storm drain before his stomach was heaving acid and blood. Panting, he slumped sideways against the wall. He reached into his pocket and examined the money, checking to make sure that it was real. Sure enough, they were. Each bill was crisp and new, on its first adventure from the minting press. Mako took in every detail of it, from the golden seal to the numbers printed on the back.

When finally he let his eyes fall on Avatar Aang, Mako lasted just a moment before his breaths melted into sobs.

xXx

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

A/n: For warnings and disclaimer, please see chapter one. Feedback is, as always, appreciated!

Thanks for reading! :D

* * *

_Part II_

Mako awoke well after sunrise with a coppery taste in his mouth. His lightweight body ached from all directions, his confidence devastated by the blow, but he forced himself to stand and limped to the nearest public restroom. This happened to be in a breakfast shop down the road. Ignoring the shocked look he received from the manager, he went straight to the toilet room, where he spent twenty minutes tending to his various sores and washing the dried blood off of his lips and chin. Luckily, the signs of abuse were only in places that he could easily cover. He'd thought his nose might be broken, it had bled so much, but there was hardly a mark. Once he appeared more like himself, Mako walked out to the register, dug into his pocket, and slammed three crumpled yuans on the countertop.

"Give me a loaf of bread and a large tea. Whatever's strongest."

He ate his half of the meal as he shuffle-walked back down the street, only stopping at the herbalist before he passed through City Station and arrived at his home. Bolin was there, pacing across the tiny space with his hands clasped behind his head. He looked about to faint when Mako ducked through the gap in the door. Mako listened patiently to his brother as the younger ran into a tangent about how scared he had been when Mako wasn't back by morning. Then Bolin spotted the bags in Mako's hand and stopped short. He took the bag very slowly, clearly suspicious that its contents were real. And when he saw the bread within, tears sprung up in his eyes.

His total purchases, including the shared meal and a cough remedy from the herbalist, had totaled five yuans. Bolin was enthralled at his brother's success, especially when Mako revealed the five remaining bills. He asked what kind of work it was, and Mako replied that he counted inventory at a junk yard. Only when Bolin asked if he could help him work next time did Mako let the suppressed sharpness bite into his voice as he refused. And when Bolin's eyebrows shot skyward in surprise, Mako quickly added that it was kind of a one-man job. And it was over anyway; he wouldn't be going back.

The trouble was that, after only a week of carefully-rationed meals, the money had run out again. Mako desperately tried to find work, spending much of the day wandering from business to business, asking if any of the owners needed assistance. Work was, as usual, scarce, and when he got it the employers paid him poorly. Soon he and his brother found themselves back where they had been a few weeks ago, crouched in the shelter with their knees drawn up to their chests to keep the chills away. Mako deliberated. He paced, he considered the risk, he bit his nails down to nothing. And when all hope of ulterior plans had escaped him, he returned to the Triad once more and became an on-call employee.

So it went. Two months passed, and then three, and suddenly Mako felt as if he had lost something he couldn't get back. He was no longer the sole proprietor of his body, surrendering himself for several nights a week. The money was more than he could get anywhere else — they paid him more than the wages he could earn with regular labor, but not enough to keep them afloat for long. And though Mako well knew that he was being taken advantage of, he also realized that as time passed, it became easier to close his eyes and disappear.

Bolin was a greater challenge. By nature he was easy-going and sweet, but he wasn't dull. When Mako returned home, bruised and carrying fistfuls of cash, he felt Bolin's eyes sweeping him over. Assessing the damage. Finally, when Bolin confronted him about working for the gangs, Mako admitted that he was doing freelance jobs. Paperwork mostly, but sometimes the tasks were dangerous or meticulous, and he risked being slapped around a bit if he did anything wrong. This explained the wounds well enough to quell Bolin's questions, but it did not put him at ease. Where Mako had once been confident, he drew back and spoke seldom even with his brother. In conversing with strangers and adults, he would not meet their eyes. Bolin didn't pry, but it became clear that the longer Mako spent working with the gangs, the further he closed himself in.

It didn't take Mako long to get arrested. At fifteen, Mako learned about the prison system when the police raided the Triad headquarters after hours and accosted everyone who didn't flee fast enough. He didn't bother resisting arrest. For the first time in his life, Mako felt largely indifferent to his fate. The officers tackled him down like a dangerous criminal, tied his wrists behind his back, and escorted him to the station. When they hollered at him for information, he neither spoke nor spared them a glance.

He was sitting quietly in his cell when a door opened just out of eyeshot. Two pairs of boots clanked down the hall, and only when the voice behind a stern "Hello, Mako" rang familiar did he grow remotely curious. The Chief was glancing over a clipboard, a definitive crease growing between her brows as she ran down the list. Beside her stood another officer, clad in similar armor and scowling down at Mako where he sat. He was holding in his hands a cardboard box, which he dropped onto a table along the wall.

He didn't lift his eyes as Chief Bei Fong appraised him, but watched from the top of his periphery. Unlike the male officer, she looked more exhausted than annoyed. She ran a finger along the list from top to bottom, pausing between each to glance at him through the metal bars, clearly putting an image to each of the descriptions. There was certainly enough to see after today's vicious client. After a strike to his nose, blood had pooled under the skin below his left eye, leaving a dark band behind. His bottom lip was puffy, but when he put his fingers to his mouth he found that the cut had stopped bleeding. Someone had confiscated his scarf (along with his pocket knife and a rolled-up wad of bills) upon arrest, more likely to keep him from harming himself than others. But Mako had turned up his collar, so the blackening teeth marks on his shoulder remained unseen.

After a long pause, the Chief announced that, despite the alleged charges of "gang affiliation", this looked like a classic case of 'in the wrong place at the wrong time'.

Beside her, the officer looked as if she had forced a lime wedge down his throat. As the officer in charge of the raid, he clearly saw Mako's arrest as an opportunity to punch a few holes in the gang's confidence. The Chief ignored him completely, tapping her fingers boredly against the clip board. She asked Mako if he knew he had been standing outside the Triad's headquarters, and Mako replied that he had not. Then she asked if he had gotten into a fight with someone, only to later find that the person was a gang member. Mako, wary that she was feeding him answers for an ulterior purpose, nevertheless answered yes. On that note, she drew an X over the sheet on the clipboard, signed it, and passed it off to the officer with his dismissal from the room. Yet even after the officer stomped out, slamming the door behind him, Mako did not look up.

The Chief waved the cell door aside with a wave of her hand. She did not step forward to help Mako stand, but rather watched expressionlessly as he hoisted himself up, leaning heavily on the wall until he had found his balance. As he half-limped to the door, she reached into the cardboard box and withdrew Mako's confiscated possessions, wrapped neatly into his scarf. Passing it to him, she told him he was free to go. He muttered a quiet thank you to his feet.

Her final word, as Mako accepted the bundle and cradled it into his chest, was a quiet "Please, be careful."

Some ten minutes later, Mako found a folded scrap of paper pinned to the fold of his scarf. Written in neat print was the name and address of a medical clinic on the opposite end of the city, with the hours for their free walk-in appointments each month. He stared at the note, read it a second time, and flipped it over. The other side was blank.

Mako stopped by the market on his way home, ignoring the wide range of stares his wounds attracted. He spent a quarter of his payment on pre-cooked komodo-chicken, steamed rice, and a basket of moonpeaches. As long as they kept the containers tightly sealed, the rations would last several days if kept in a dark, cool place. When he arrived home, though, he quickly noticed that Bolin had been hard at work, too. In one corner of the shelter — the "storage" corner — he had piled up two crates and topped it off with a bottle of wine. Bolin threw his arms around his brother the moment Mako slipped through the door, the latter almost dropping his purchases in surprise.

In an excited voice Bolin explained how he had found some work down at the port, loading crates on and off the ships in exchange for a sampling of the product. This was something that Mako had attempted many times, but never to any avail. Bolin, however, appeared to have a gift. Mako always knew that Bolin's good nature and natural talent for conversation would help him make friends. What he hadn't considered was that this combination of talents also made people more likely to hire Bolin; he made people laugh, he made them feel at ease, and then they offered to help in return. It also didn't hurt that Bolin was broad-shouldered and strong by nature—when Mako considered his own lean and lanky build, he had to admit that he would probably hire Bolin over himself, too.

Mako was immensely proud of his brother, and told him as much as Bolin began showing off his prizes. He set the bottle of wine aside and opened the crates. The first of the two was filled with vacuum-sealed packets of cowhippo jerky (Water Tribe-made, their favorite kind) and dried plums. The second had different kinds of nuts, as well as a huge store of fresh water surrounded by a few bags of ice. A little too casually, Bolin tossed Mako one of the bags, which Mako applied directly to his left eye. When his brother's back was turned, Mako double-checked that his shoulder was covered properly.

That night they ate the fruit with a few strips of jerky, passing the wine bottle back and forth until neither was particularly sober. It was one of the best meals they had ever shared, far better than dinners served in the old shelter. They became a bit giggly, but only once Bolin's loud proclamation of "I feel like a king!" was disrupted by a loud hiccup did they dissolve into howling laughter and eventually fall asleep.

That same night, Mako awoke when he heard a rummaging noise. Sitting up, Mako Bended a flame into his palm and cast a wary glance. When he spotted the small animal rummaging through the crates, he cried out so loudly that Bolin snapped to attention at and threw his arms up for a fight. Never before had any rat or rodent gotten into their home at night—once Bolin sealed off the entrance, there was no way in or out except with his permission. A chaotic scramble ensued, in which Mako lurched (still quite drunk) after the rodent. Then, to Mako's utmost surprise, Bolin dived in front of Mako and threw himself between his brother and the animal. The result was a brief struggle, where both boys tried to grab the rodent, Bolin to protect it and Mako to tear it apart. Bolin finally got his hands around it and heaved it out from inside the jerky crate.

"Pabu, _no!_"

Mako fell back, baffled, thinking that he must have imagined the words coming from Bolin's mouth. _Pabu?_ He tried to grab the squeaking rodent from Bolin, but Bolin easily fended him off with one hand. Mako tripped backward and fell. The flame went out. A flash of light passed over his vision when his head connected with the earthen wall, and seconds later he heard Bolin's frantic apologies. These he dismissed, slapping Bolin's hands away when the younger tried to help him up.

"Did you catch that thing?" Mako said. He shook his head to clear out the fog, then Firebended another tiny flame into his palm.

Bolin shifted from foot to foot and all at once he confessed that he had found the weasel-looking thing—he called it 'Pabu', as if it were already a member of the family—in one of the cargo ships. It was cold and hungry and hurting, he said, just like them, and he wanted to keep it until it was healthy again. Mako, spotting the cage that Bolin had Earthbended moments before, told him that they couldn't afford any pets. He started after it with the intent of booting the weasel out the door. And once again, Bolin stepped between Mako and his quarry.

Mako couldn't remember the last time they fought like this. His perfectly adequate reasoning—that they couldn't afford to feed another mouth, that the weasel probably carried some awful disease that would kill them—didn't even reach Bolin's ears. The Earthbender stubbornly refused to accept logic. He could feed it on his own, he said, because Pabu didn't eat much. He would share his own ration if he had to, so they wouldn't have to worry about getting more food. Bolin didn't seem to care that this meant sacrificing meals when he already wasn't getting enough. Somehow this flea-bitten weasel had captured Bolin's heart and eroded his good reason. Eventually Mako had to relent, agreeing to talk about it in the morning when they were fully back in their heads.

However, just as Mako had feared, Bolin hadn't come around by the time they awoke. On the contrary, when Mako woke up Bolin was hand-feeding the weasel scraps of jerky ("He's a fire ferret, and his name is Pabu" Bolin chided in response to Mako's "get rid of that weasel."). Mako watched with mild disgust as the fire ferret ate right from Bolin's fingers, squeaking contentedly. In the daylight, Pabu looked much less like an overgrown rat. His matted fur was actually a brilliant shade of orange-red, his amber eyes peering at Mako as if the human were an intruder in the home. After the ferret had eaten, Bolin announced that he was taking him to the river for a bath. Mako shook his head. He had a vivid image of Bolin trying to wrestle the wriggling ferret into the water, only to be chased away by the police (who had an annoying tendency to kick the homeless out of the park). He rolled his eyes and told Bolin not to get too attached. They couldn't afford to keep any pets. He could hardly keep the two of them from starvation as it was.

Naturally, Pabu stayed. Mako gave up after several weeks of scornfully staring at the ferret. And though he would never admit it, he grew to enjoy Pabu's presence in the shelter. He really didn't eat all that much (and, better yet, ate the occasional bug), he was quiet, and Bolin had somehow trained him to do his business outside. Even more important, he made Bolin genuinely happy. The two were inseparable, Pabu perching himself on Bolin's shoulder as they hunted for work. Though the food lasted quite a while—long enough for Mako to physically recover from his last appointment with the Triad—they learned many years ago that they could not afford to get complacent. They had varied success in procuring food and payment, but as usual, they spent most of the time plotting rather than working.

For a while they were able to maintain relative stability. The brothers celebrated Mako's sixteenth birthday by splitting a lemon bar and a beer Bolin swiped from some picnickers at the park. At one point, they even had enough money to restock some of the essentials that they'd let slide in recent years—new toothbrushes, a pair of second-hand scissors that would actually cut through hair, clothes that fit. The trip to the used clothing store occurred after Bolin joked they might have better luck if they looked a little less like men in children's clothing. Mako bought a tunic, some black fabric for patches, and pair of shoes that were not three sizes too small (Bolin had grown out of his, too, but he preferred to go barefoot anyway). Bolin got for himself a second pair of too-long pants with elastic at the bottom hem, so that he could roll them down as he grew taller. Then, after squabbling over whose facial hair was growing in more evenly (they eventually decided that neither had an impressive beard), they purchased a brand new razor. They arrived back at home in high spirits, shopper's remorse for once very distant on their minds, and had a small dinner. Afterward, Bolin finger-combed Pabu's fur while Mako repaired their old clothes using the new patch cloth and his sewing kit.

Somehow the gangs appeared in an otherwise easy conversation. Mako, who usually did his best to avoid the topic, wasn't sure how they had arrived here. He hadn't worked for the gang in a while now—the upswing in the market meant that he'd been able to get jobs elsewhere. He had hoped the thought would leave Bolin's mind. Evidently this was not the case. There had been a pause, and then Bolin asked why Mako let the gangsters beat him up. When he first began working for the gangs, Mako had specifically said that they fought when Mako had done something wrong. But Bolin didn't think this could possibly be the case, as he had seen his brother successfully fight off people in the past (usually only in situations where they had no other choice). So he, in his beautiful naiveté, decided that the fight must be rather one-sided. He admitted that he wasn't very comfortable with the notion of Mako sacrificing his well-being in order to feed and clothe them, even if they had no other choice.

For a long time after Bolin stopped speaking, Mako contemplated this notion. He replied that it wasn't as bad as it looked sometimes, and even though he didn't like working for the gangs, it often looked like their best ticket out of poverty for good. If they kept saving, kept clean, and kept persevering through the hard times, then eventually they would get the right sort of opportunity. In the meantime, all they could do was try to make the best of it.

Another pause. Then Bolin set Pabu (who had fallen asleep in his master's lap) aside, crawled over to his bag, and resurfaced with a hefty stack of papers. At the very top of this pile was a flyer for the annual Pro Bending tournament, which he handed over with the explanation that he had been reading about the tournament in the newspaper and thought it might be worth a shot. A pang ran through Mako's chest as he skimmed the ad; over two years ago, he had listened to the kids fantasize about becoming Pro Benders and living the high life until the end of their days, so surrounded by money and adoring fans that the hard times were hardly a bad dream on the periphery. Back then he had thought the idea silly and stupid. He _still _thought as much. He and his brother used Bending fairly often, using the basics for survival and, when they were up to it, the occasional spar. It was as much a part of them as anything else, just another tool in the arsenal, so integral to their everyday life that he often didn't even notice it. On the occasions when he did have to fight, he fared well—one of the most serious instances had been when a group of older vagabonds had tried to commandeer Mako and Bolin's shelter, only to wind up running off with their clothes singed (and, thanks to a few choice hits from a nine-year-old Bolin, probable concussions). But competitively…?

Mako looked up from the page, eyebrows aloft, to see that hope had crept into Bolin's expression.

"Bo, this tournament is for people who are _professionals_. People who've been trained all their lives and think they can make a career out of it. That's why they call it 'Pro' Bending, not 'mediocre' Bending."

"I don't think we're mediocre, Mako! Well, at least you're not. But look, I've been taking notes at the library—" here Bolin spread the rest of the papers out over the space between them, revealing newspaper clippings and about a hundred forms that he had copied meticulously from instructional books. "We can teach ourselves everything we don't already know. Maybe if we practice enough, we can try out for a spot!"

Though Mako didn't think there was much merit in the idea, he couldn't bring himself to say it in front of Bolin, who had clearly poured much of his time and energy into designing a training program. For once they were fed enough to spare a little extra energy, and practice might do them good even if nothing came of the overall plan. They had missed this year's tryouts, but by this time next year… they'd never tried to reach their potential as Benders before; who was he to count them out?

Thus training began. Newly energized by the opportunity to make a tangible contribution to the family, Bolin dragged Mako out of bed each morning for a warm-up jog around the block. Then they went to the park and found a stretch of grass far away from the Equalist protestors (their constant chanting and jeering annoyed both brothers immensely). Mako was handed a stack of Bolin's hand-drawn Firebending forms and told to go practice.

In the middle of the pile Mako discovered what looked like forms for Bending lightning. Bolin spotted him frowning at the description and said it couldn't hurt to try it—they couldn't use it in the tournament, but it might be useful someday. There was no way Bolin could remember that their father had picked up shifts at the factory. Still, the sharp jab of homesickness was so unfamiliar after all these years that it overrode Mako's skepticism. It would be stupid to try to actually Bend lightning without real instruction; he'd heard of people who had accidentally stopped their own hearts during accidents with real instructors. He memorized the form, paying close attention to Bolin's copied scribbles about chi flow, then shuffled the sheet to the bottom of the stack.

They spent a few hours on their own elements, then studied the game itself by going over game synopses from the newspaper, and finally ended training with a scrimmage, using real Bending whenever they were sure they wouldn't be caught. The prospect of throwing fireballs at his little brother was not one that particularly thrilled Mako, but Bolin fared well. The Earthbender certainly had an interesting style—it was a strange combination of scrappiness with the agility of the light-footed form used by most of the pros. Against Firebenders (or at least Mako) it seemed quite effective, with Bolin's natural strength often overcoming Mako's resilience. In the evenings where games were broadcast, they sat outside a local bar and listened to the match on the radio.

After a few months, they had reached a point where sparring usually ended in either a stalemate or a de-evolution into fist fighting. They were hungrier than usual, but they were also growing stronger, putting on the muscle mass that might have come easily with a little extra nutrition. Their training sessions, always held outdoors in remote, tree-shaded corner of Republic City Park, even occasionally attracted attention from passers-by. Mako paid these curious eyes little heed, limiting his reaction to a smirk-and-nod combination whenever somebody cute made their acute attention very clear. He preferred to channel his focus into getting stronger, faster, not out of lacking interest but… well. After the last few years, Mako had replaced the urge for intimacy with the desperate drive to win the opportunity to pursue it on his own terms. Bolin, however, had no such preoccupation.

If Bolin had ever experienced an interest in romance, he kept it quiet from Mako until now. As soon as he noticed that he was being watched, he became annoyingly attentive to his regular "fans", which made him an easy target in practice. He exaggerated his Bending forms, flexed his biceps, did countless pushups, chatted with the girls and guys who stopped to enjoy the show. Mako couldn't remember feeling this secure in his own body at Bolin's age (fourteen going on twenty-five, apparently). Quite the opposite, he remembered thinking that his needs—the "itch" and all the accompanying daydreams—were bothersome, even shameful.

But then, fourteen for Mako had been a very strange year. He didn't have an expansive knowledge of other peoples' experiences, but Bolin's way of exploring this side of adolescence seemed more… normal. More so, at least, than dropping his pants around his ankles and shimmying with a girl he barely knew in a dark alley at the age of twelve. Still, he thought he ought to bring up the topic of puberty and sex with his little brother before Bolin could get himself into a stupid situation. Mako didn't need an addition to the family legacy, not when he could barely support two (three, if Pabu counted) and their record wasn't great to begin with. However, one afternoon when he tried to confront Bolin for a talk, Bolin waved away Mako's book about human development with the comment that he "knew all that stuff already". Then, in the enthusiastic air with which he approached all things, Bolin proceeded to inform his brother about things that Mako hadn't even known. Evidently Mako's concerns about Bolin's awareness of puberty, chemicals, and body smarts had been unfounded. He promptly shut his mouth.

At seventeen, Mako learned about confidence and optimism. Unfortunately, the universe seemed to enjoy poking holes in his plans. Just as the brothers were finally starting to feel self-assured, the employment rush came to an abrupt end. Food once more became a worrisome factor. Mako tried not to let the downturn worry him much (it was easier to accomplish with an adamantly optimistic brother at his side). The Pro Bending tryouts were in two months, they had some cash left over, and in the meantime he was still finding work here and there. He was finally growing into his lanky frame, building self-esteem that had been tarnished by repeated failure, starvation, and abuse. For the first time in months, Mako had begun to feel more like himself.

This newfound positivity did not last long after the downturn. The jobs ran out, funds wore thin, and the brothers resorted back to their deplorably tiny portions and infrequent meals. By the time the tournament tryouts arrived, they had fallen off of their game. No food meant no energy, which meant that all the improvements they had made through rigorous training were wasted in the arena. Even with a decent Waterbender standing in on their team, the brothers couldn't contend with the well-fed, professionally-trained competition. Crestfallen from the rejection, soaked from being tossed effortlessly into the water pit, Mako and Bolin trudged back home to contemplate their situation.

Not two days later, a satomobile pulled up along the sidewalk while Mako and Bolin were passing through the Station. A voice called out Mako's name, and he was instantly struck with such a strong sense of terror that he almost couldn't respond to the summons. Mako halted mid-step, Bolin stutter-stopped to keep himself from crashing into his brother, and Pabu went flying straight off Bolin's shoulder. Mako told his decidedly confused brother to stay put before he walked, chin angled downward, over to the vehicle.

Mako had learned only a handful of names during the affiliation with the Triad, all of whom belonged to the types of people Bolin called 'nasty dudes'. There was Lightning Bolt Zolt, of course, and then there was his second in command: Shady Shin. The latter of the two gangsters occupied the driver's seat of the satomobile, one elbow propped on the open window and a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. When Mako arrived at the side of the satomobile, Shady Shin greeted him with a "Long time no see, pal. How's it been?"

In a subdued voice, Mako asked what Shady Shin wanted. Shady Shin said that if Mako was strapped for cash there was a potential job offer.

Mako told him that he wasn't interested. Shady Shin asked him if he could afford to be disinterested, and Mako replied that he could. Shady Shin said the deal was worth fifty yuans. When Mako retorted he'd heard that excuse before and wasn't interested anyway, Shady Shin remedied his offer to seventy-five yuans and his good word.

This sum gave Mako some pause. Even if they ripped him off by eighty percent, as they were apt to do, he'd still be making more than double the usual payment. He shoved his hands into his pockets, glanced from the stone curb to the steering wheel of the vehicle, anywhere but straight at his propositioner. He asked who the client would be, and Shady Shin replied with a name that Mako knew quite well. Then Mako shook his head, stepping back from the vehicle as he did so. This client had been his last before he was arrested, and it had been one of his very worst nights. The ugly bite mark on his shoulder had only just faded away. He was not in a hurry to earn another. Again he refused.

Then Shady Shin looked over Mako's shoulder, to where Bolin stood watching just out of earshot. "Your friend's cute. Maybe he'd like to make a few—"

"Don't even think about it."

Shady Shin shrank away from the window as Mako grasped the sill in both hands and leaned right in, squarely blocking the gangster's view of Bolin. It took him a full three seconds to recover, and even once he had, it was with an unsettled laugh.

"Then I'd better see you two hours before midnight. Otherwise, you know, anything could happen." Shady Shin shrugged, falling back into nonchalance and putting the satomobile into gear. A moment later had driven off, leaving Mako coughing in a plume of exhaust.

The day did not improve from that point. Mako could not be sure which part of this situation bothered him more: his immediate resignation, or Bolin's reaction to it. Until now he hadn't realized how visible his state of mind had been, much less how deeply it affected his brother. Bolin once had voiced his discomfort at being fed and clothed at the expense of Mako's immediate well-being, but he had never reacted as he did now. But then, neither had Mako. After weeks of improvement and growing back into his former self—not withdrawn and quiet, but curious and competitive—it was terrifying to acknowledge how quickly it all went away. Side-by-side he and Bolin walked back home, Mako's eyes now trained devoutly to the ground. They lapsed into a silence that lasted until long after dinner. For the most part, Mako sat in silence. He snapped back to life only when he realized Bolin had said his name four times, starting as if he'd been touched with a spark.

Hanging on the brink of tears, Bolin begged Mako to stay home. He offered to go in his brother's place. He said he would learn how to do the job and then they could split shifts. Anything was better than this…seeing Mako shut down from the inside out, leave his body, and disappear into someone neither of them knew. Mako shook his head and pried Bolin's fingers from around his wrists and told him he would be back in the morning, but it was too late for Mako to prove that he was strong. He had revealed the person he became at the click of the lock, when there was no escape—obedient, passive. Empty and indifferent.

Mako removed his scarf and set it down, gently, on the floor before he left. On his walk to the meeting place, Mako wondered how Bolin could be so blind to what was happening. He wasn't too young to understand, and he was particularly tuned to Mako's moods and thoughts. To Mako the made-up excuses sounded out like a horn, bafflingly obvious in his own ears. The Chief of Police had figured him out after one good look-over, and she only saw him in the direct aftermath. She hadn't gotten to witness his slow retreat.

But then, the answer was just as blatant. Never in their whole lives had Mako given Bolin reason to suspect that he would lie. Mako walked.

Half an hour later Mako reached the factory neighborhood. He went into the clubhouse door, up a flight of stairs, recalling as he went the very first time he had come here expecting to tally stolen parts. That this path had become routine was never part of his plan, yet so it was. Taro was waiting for him there, tapping his fingers on his belt buckle.

Without a greeting, Taro told him that the client would arrive in ten minutes. He said that the client had requested him specifically, and that if Mako didn't screw it up then he would become a regular and there could be good money for both of them. Once Mako was released, Taro said, he would have to walk to headquarters to collect his cut. Then he opened the door to Mako's room and let him inside. For the first time, he did not lock the door on his way out. Mako had nowhere else to go.

Mako was at first confused why Taro hadn't stayed. He usually stood outside the door for the thirty or so minutes and then tossed Mako his money when he was done. Anxious, Mako sat down on the chair and then stood up again. He wrung his hands, stretched his arms and shoulders. He took a few slow, deep breaths. The client arrived exactly on time, stayed for an hour, and did not waste a single minute.

Mako stayed long after the client left, sprawled out across the cool metal floor with his mind drifting in and out of sleep. After about an hour he rose, dressed, and stuck his head into the dim hallway. He had heard the sounds of others in the building, but they had left sometime during his doze. Only a handful of times had he ever heard the other employees, and only once had he seen one—Mako had just arrived when a woman was leaving, and he had been so taken aback by her straggled appearance that he at first didn't realize that she was completely high. Her name was Mara. He'd heard Taro say her name as he flipped her a wad of bills. Since then, the only encounter he had with the others was the occasional sound through the thin walls. Taro had always been there to make sure he never had the chance to speak with them.

But since Taro wasn't here, Mako padded barefoot down the hallway, peeking in through the doors as he went. The building—at least this floor—was vacant save for him. Every other room was just as barren as the one he often occupied, with the same chair and dirty mattress occupying about half of the space. Finally, at the very back end of the hall, Mako made a discovery. There was a staircase leading down to the lower level (the stairs leading up had been roped off and marked as dangerous), and there Mako found what must have been a locker room at some point. He supposed this made sense. The production wing of the factory was adjacent to this part, and even the more modern factories had a place for the manual workers to freshen up. Here, there was a wall of lockers, a toilet in a separate room, a row of sinks, and two shower stalls made private by an old curtain on rungs. The first shower was missing its faucet. The second, miraculously, not only had a faucet but also running water. Mako stuck his hand in the water and recoiled from the cold. Among other survival tricks, being a Firebender meant that the water in their wash basin was always warm.

After suspiciously eyeing the sporadic water stream, Mako decided that he would rather shower here than not at all. He crossed back to the room's only entrance and blocked the door with a heavy bench, just in case someone wandered down stairs. In a metal cabinet he found a few hand towels that looked clean enough to use. Then he undressed and stepped under the spray. The icy water hit him like a knee to the gut, forcing him a few steps backward until he bumped up against the wall. His skin recoiled and numbed on contact, but Mako forced himself to stay put until he had washed away every speck of that man from his body—the echo of unwelcome touch, glued down with the sticky-slickness of lubricant and whatever else was left over. His sweat wasn't even his own, but a sickly mixture of the two. Mako scrubbed himself raw, dug it out with his finger nails, letting the water run down the drain by his feet before shutting off the flow. He was shivering, but he didn't mind. The cold had shocked him back to life.

Mako warmed up with a breath of fire, wiped the excess water away with a hand towel, and stepped into his pants. Before tugging his shirt over his head, Mako used the mirror to check for any damage. This time he was lucky; whatever marks he bore were the type to fade in a few hours (and in fact the red lines around his wrists were almost gone already). He also noticed, with clinical impassivity, that despite his hunger he looked stronger than he used to. Training had put some muscle on his skinny frame. The client, too, had noticed this change and hissed it in his ear. Briefly Mako thought that it would have been nice to have the chance to feel pride in his newer, older appearance, before it was taken away from him as well.

Only one very visible wound would remain in the next days, and this he could cover up. Mako scooted closer to the dusty mirror, bending over double to get a better look. He counted eight little crescent moons around his waist. Of these, only three were actively bleeding. Satisfied with his luck, Mako finished dressing and took the short walk to headquarters, where he found about ten gang members playing cards around the table. Taro stood when he spotted the Firebender approaching, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a fistful of cash. Before he handed it over he asked with a smirk how it had gone. Mako ignored this question and, alarmed by his own nerve, reached up and plucked a cigarette out of Taro's breast pocket. Taro did not blink as Mako stuck the smoke in his mouth and lit the end between his fingers. He told Mako to come back the same time next week. Slipping the yuans into his pocket, Mako backed out the door.

Heading home was usually a bittersweet affair. It meant returning to his brother, but usually with the burden of having to create a story for his new bruises. Generally he allowed himself the entire night to recover before taking the long walk as well, but despite the longer appointment, the client had been rather gentle and left Mako feeling half as wounded as usual. More than normal he looked forward to getting back to where he felt safe, to Bolin and a warm place to sleep. So instead of seeking an alley corner, Mako went straight to their shelter (he even thought he felt fine enough to jog, but this was a mistake; after only a few seconds he was back to his wide-gaited walk). When he reached the entrance, the slab of earth Bolin sealed in place every night was standing unlocked. Mako easily pushed it aside and ducked into the space.

Bolin wasn't inside. At first Mako was alarmed, until he realized that Pabu was gone too, along with the tape that Bolin used to wrap his hands when he practiced heavy lifting. Mako closed the entrance and lay down. He sought his scarf, but the scarf was not there.

xXx

**TBC**


	3. Chapter 3

A/n: Please see the first chapter for an extensive list of warnings, as well as a general disclaimer!

Many, MANY thanks to my wonderful beta, wherewulf. I couldn't do it without you, dear!

Note: The time tlok takes place is roughly 1920's Hong Kong/USA. I have stretched some stuff here and there, but most apparent may be the level of medical knowledge in this fic. Please forgive my use of slightly more advanced med tech/knowledge!

Thanks to all those who have read and reviewed thus far. You keep me posting when I just want to call it quits. Thank you so much.

* * *

_Part III_

Within a few months, Mako had earned a decent sum of money. They kept the stash of yuans locked safely in an Earthbended hole in the wall, opened only for necessities and emergencies. Mako paid for his income with weekly trips to the clubhouse, where his now regular client never failed to show. The middle-aged man, who had broad shoulders but rather weak posture, was unpredictable. Some days he was forceful, others gentle, and still others he lashed out in brutality. Mostly Mako kept passive, aggressing only when he had to—when the client tried to put a fresh bite mark on a very visible part of his neck, for example—because the only thing the client liked more than a Mako devoid of life was the opportunity to reinforce his dominance. So while Mako occasionally made it through without detectable damage, more often he emerged with his body painted like a canvas to the client's whims. Some marks were easier to hide than others, but he made due. As long as the more obvious abrasions stayed hidden, he looked like any other kid who made a habit out of picking fights.

He understood now why that woman had been strung out, even if it was impossible to tell whether the addiction came before the job. How easy this must be when one had no concept of time or body. To just slump into the corner where two walls meet and slip right through. But Mako had a family to support, and he had a goal. The second they had enough money to do so, he was going to pack them up and move somewhere else. Somewhere where they could start over a safe distance from the gangs and the locals who knew them as street kids. Preferably someplace with job opportunities and sustainable wages. In this respect, Republic City had let a huge number of its citizens down.

Late one evening, something changed. Mako had just arrived at the Triple Threat Triad's headquarters to collect his weekly sum (usually thirty yuans or so) when he realized he was walking into an argument. At first he didn't even notice—the client had burned a little round cigarette mark into Mako's hip and it was distractingly painful when his clothes brushed up on it—but a loud swear caught his attention. Three men (Taro, Lightning Bolt Zolt, and another that Mako did not recognize) leaned over a book on the counter. Zolt was brandishing a pencil and scribbling in the margins of the book, clearly annoyed as the two others read over his shoulder and tried to give him numbers. Mako quickly picked up on the conversation.

Apparently they were balancing the monthly finance book and had come up severely short. Apparently—Mako listened, not bothering to hide or announce himself—this was becoming a regular occurrence. Zolt's face tinged an alarming shade of purple. The three men went over the numbers again. Every gang member reported their dealings and earnings in painstaking detail, noting every yuan that came or left the account and reporting it at the end of the week. From each "department" (Mako could only imagine what that meant), there was a net gain or loss that took into account all fees paid, who did what transaction, and how much each member earned. The three men, ignoring Mako's appearance in the room, reviewed in meticulous detail every department and still came up several thousand yuans short. Eventually Zolt let out a furious growl and announced to no one in particular that he was going to punch someone unless they figured out what was going on. And before Mako could stop himself, he had muttered a quiet, "He's swindling you."

All three older men looked up, as if surprised to see Mako standing there even though the bouncer at the door had granted him permission to enter. Zolt told Mako to repeat what he'd said. Mako spoke to the ground.

"Whoever balanced the books is swindling you," he said. Then he explained in a monotone that the total net gains did not match up with the percentages that the bookkeeper reported. More specifically, one to two percent was missing from each of the deals. "He reports the percent as a fraction less than what it really is and pockets the difference. It's a small enough number so that you wouldn't notice it until you add them all up."

The silence that followed went unfilled by Mako and the three dumbfounded men at the bar counter for a good ten seconds.

"What's your name?" said Lightning Bolt Zolt. Mako muttered the answer. "Look at me when I'm talking to you."

For a moment Mako hesitated. It took him a great deal of willpower to make him lift his chin, and when he did so it was only just enough to meet his employer's eyes. Mako reported his name a second time, in a louder voice. He watched Zolt mouth the word, clearly connecting the name to the face as if he had never seen the boy before.

"How'd you get that answer, Mako?" Mako shrugged one shoulder up and down, just once. "Show me."

Mako obeyed, Zolt's two inferiors falling back to allow Mako room. He took the pencil when Zolt offered it, erased the gangster's sloppy computations from the margins, and very carefully wrote out the first equation longhand. He did it for each different department's numbers before eventually reaching the total percentage, which he circled. Sure enough, the actual number was about two and a half percent deviant from what it should be. Mako set down the pencil and stared at his final answer. For anyone who understood how to write out the equations, the math was really quite simple. He'd taught himself from the book Bolin gifted him on his thirteenth birthday.

Neither Lightning Bolt Zolt nor his cronies knew what to do with this new information. The boss asked Taro if Mako was one of his kids, and Taro replied that he was. Then he asked if another person (presumably the bookkeeper) was around, and the other man said that he was not. Zolt sent the unfamiliar man off to get Shady Shin and bring the bookkeeper back for a little chat. Only once he was out the door did Zolt turn back to Mako. He asked where Mako had learned how to do math, and Mako answered truthfully—that he had learned by studying arithmetic books. Zolt flipped to a previous month that hadn't added up properly and had Mako crosscheck these numbers as well, which Mako did with similar results.

"Well Mako, I'm thinking that we might have a job opening soon. How would you like to work in the office?"

Mako stared. A fleeting memory of his past self flitted over his memory, an image of a child nearly jumping for joy at the prospect of fifty yuans. He had lost most of his trust since then, and all of his naiveté. Instead of accepting at once, Mako asked what the terms of his employment might be—namely his job description, and his payment. Zolt replied that he would report here, once a week, for a few hours in the evening to collect the members' reports and organize a formal report for Zolt. The pay they could settle on, unless Mako had any other terms. Mako said that he did. First, he never wanted to work for Taro or his department again. He pointed to the swollen corner of his mouth for emphasis. Zolt nodded and shrugged as if this were an obvious stipulation (Taro, undoubtedly about to lose a customer, did not look so unperturbed). Second, Mako explained the time Shady Shin had threatened to recruit or harm his brother, and said that this must never happen again. Again, Zolt agreed without a second thought. Clearly he didn't give even half a care about losing Bolin as a potential employee. Finally, Mako said he was willing to earn as low as thirty yuans a week, but no less. Privately he thought that this was more than enough to feed he and his brother for a week and still have some left over for savings.

At this, Zolt and Taro actually burst into laughter. Zolt agreed to Mako's wage. Embarrassed though he was by his humble payment request, Mako didn't blink. Once the two men had stopped chuckling, he said that he had one more request before he agreed.

"When I first met you, you told me my job was worth fifty yuans. I got ten. I want the other forty now, plus the fifty Taro promised me for today."

Lightning Bolt Zolt appraised Mako for a moment longer, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of money. He counted out ninety yuans, slid them across the counter to Mako, and offered a shake. Heart pounding in disbelief, Mako grasped Zolt's hand and shook it.

The gesture marked the end of an era that had lasted over two and a half years. Mako never returned to the clubhouse again.

Bolin burst into tears when Mako arrived home with the news of his promotion and the ninety yuans. They had never held that much money at once and were torn between needing to save and desperately wanting to spend it all at once. Mako added the sum to their savings of about sixty five yuans. With this much money, they had possibilities for the first time in their lives. They could purchase two trans-ocean tickets to the Fire Nation or two train tickets to any one of the Earth Kingdom cities, but upon arriving they would find themselves in the same situation they were in now—homeless and completely broke. The nations' economies relied on one another to survive. If Republic City, one of the largest trading spaces in the world, was suffering through the years, then the other nations doubtlessly felt similar ups and downs. He had heard that things were better in different parts of the world, but he had also heard immigrants say the same about the United Republic. Grudgingly Mako set this idea aside. He wanted to get them out of this place, but not until they could at least survive wherever they wound up.

On the other hand, they could also look for a low-fee apartment or other means of housing here in the city. This idea Mako found only marginally more plausible; they couldn't pay the rent for more than a few months, and frankly, he had lost his trust in strangers. When they were locked safely inside, their little shelter in the alcove was more secure than any random apartment. The tenants of the shops didn't seem to mind the boys living there after all these years; they were neat and polite and kept clear of the drugs that brought the majority of crime to these neighborhoods. They didn't interfere with business, and the fact that they were Benders actually meant the area was safer—other vagabond types were less likely to engage in a turf battle, especially since they had claimed the grounds as children (not to mention that they could be found training in the park quite often). The brothers had never given the shop keepers a reason to boot them out, and unless someone new moved in to the space, they were likely to be left in peace.

So they stayed. Bolin seemed almost pleased with this decision, as he barely remembered his parents and felt more affection for this literal hole in the wall than he had ever felt for his home, or the orphanage from which they had escaped. Instead they went on with their previous plans. Mako worked once a week, bringing home a small sum (thirty yuans, the amount promised to him), and the rest of the time they spent as they always did: training in the park on nice days, unless the police were bored and chased them out on the false grounds that they had been caught Bending (an act prohibited on the grounds of safety, though they only ever stuck to forms and hand-to-hand fights). On rainy or cold days, they reported to the library and self-taught until closing hour. At night they could sometimes practice actual Bending—the real stuff, which was harder for Bolin to get away with in the daytime because it usually involved chucking heavy rocks around.

Training was going all right, but there was only so much they could accomplish without a sparring arena. What was worse, what they learned about Pro Bending was only what they could study from the radio and newspapers they dug out of the public bins. The only time they had been on the playing field had been the practice circle during their first run for the tournament, but they had never seen the actual stadium. This had been a problem in their tryouts, though at the time it had dwarfed against the much more immediate issue of starvation. The brothers had talent, but lacked field sense that came with studying and playing on the court itself.

Mako thought about what they should do, going over their finance schedule three months in advance. Eventually he felt he had no choice but to bring Bolin to the arena one night and surprise him by buying two tickets off of a scalper just before a big match. Bolin danced with glee as Mako handed him the ticket, dutifully agreeing to the warning that they were only there to study the teams and their strategies live. Mako had brought paper and writing utensils for note-taking. These were, of course, promptly abandoned in the excitement of the match.

xXx

Running numbers for the Triad was such a different experience than his prior work that it took Mako over a month to believe that nothing awful was going to happen to him. The members were gruff but friendly, clasping his hand or offering a nod and a greeting upon his arrival each week. Even Taro, who he saw mercifully seldom, seemed to have completely forgotten that he had treated Mako quite poorly for a very long time. Presumably he had found a replacement for the client—another boy on starvation's precarious edge, or else an eager drug addict. Mako tried not to think about it much. It was hard, though, to forgive the gang despite his valued position and (regardless of the condescension, he could not ask for more without raising eyebrows) adequate pay.

His job was simple enough as long as he was careful not to make any mathematical errors. As the budget books were written in a cryptic format to evade the police, it was normal for Mako to have to figure out the individual departments. Usually he could accomplish this by referencing the gang member's book code name, or by knowing which departments earned the most money. Drug trade, for example, earned by far the most profit, with monthly sums in the tens of thousands even though Mako never saw the faces of the money makers. This department was broken up into less conspicuous sub-categories according to dealer and drug type. Other departments were not as familiar.

On his first day of monthly reports, Mako had been calculating the weekly and monthly totals when he came upon a large sum that he couldn't identify. The department head's name was written with initials that doubtless referred to a code name, and the department itself was simply entitled "Outsource Trade". It didn't have a weekly report, but rather a large monthly report with a breakdown for each week. After fifteen minutes of fruitless guesswork, Mako finally asked a higher-ranked member, who he met for the first time that same day, which department Outsource Trade belonged to. The man replied that this was Taro's department. The week prior a near police blowout had prompted them to take extra precaution in concealing the nature of the business. Now Taro reported his numbers weekly to his superior and monthly to the book.

Mako stared at the numbers, expressionless while his heart pounded in his ears. These sums were... impossibly large. Cautiously, feigning indifference, Mako asked how much Taro brought in per client. The man shrugged and smirked.

"About a thousand an hour, I think. More for home visits. Taro brings in the best sums of any one of us. But I guess it's easier for him—he only pays his people enough for 'em to go across the street and get high. They dump the money right back into our hands, the dumb whores."

A thousand yuans an hour. Mako could barely contain his anger until he got home, biting the inside of his cheek to keep his breathing in line. That night, he became so angry that he would have broken his hand punching a brick wall were Bolin not quick enough to dissolve the earth on contact. Mako made excuses for his behavior, apologized for scaring his brother, and stoppered up his rage before it could get him into any more trouble. Mako had always known he had been used, but never to this extent. What was more, this discovery made him realize the true nature of the secrecy in the gang. Being bookkeeper meant that he knew all the secrets of the business, knew just how much they made off of the drug market and by manipulating people like him.

He more than resented the Triple Threat Triad—he hated them, all of them, from the hours he had spent in misery down to the smug amusement with which his boss watched him work. For some bizarre reason he had thought this job would make him feel less trapped, but now he saw that he was just as fucked as ever. Now he was a commodity of a different sort; getting closer to the gang only meant that he knew too much, and this ensured that he would be disposed of before they let him go.

Months passed and not much changed. Mako was on familiar terms with many of the gang, engaging in conversation at headquarters (of which there was quite a lot, especially after hours when the bar opened up) and going over numbers with Lightning Bolt Zolt when he had to. In his deep most heart he still hated them all, but it was hard to actively resent the people who paid his salary without fail, especially since they were a rather chummy bunch. They laughed and carried on, teasing one another and swapping stories while Mako sat with his head bent low over the books and his pencil zooming down the page. They offered him smokes, which he sometimes accepted, and drinks, which he usually refused. Mako was reminded of the kids who used to hang out around the station after dark, only older and even more vulgar than the night crew ever was. Like the kids of his past, they took a liking to the reserved young man who always set up his work in the most remote corner of the room. He was stubbornly task-oriented, but they were persistent. It became a sort of accomplishment if they could earn a laugh out of him, any sort of laugh, because as it turned out they were just as contagious as they were rare. For a bunch of tough men, they seemed to find an odd comfort in Mako's smile.

Mako was getting stronger. Bolin, too, though nobody ever doubted that the latter was capable of immense physical power. They ate two square meals a day (sometimes three, if Bolin had a say), which Mako prepared in mass quantities and kept sealed airtight for up to three days at a time. Most of their training comprised of muscle-building workouts and endurance, with forms dispersed throughout the regime and real Bending whenever they had a chance to get away with it. Soon the annual tryouts were once again just two months away. As long as nothing awful happened, they would be far more ready than last year. They had trained tirelessly, resigned to the knowledge that if they didn't make it into the tournament they would be subjected to another year of the same struggle.

Even if they did make it, though, Mako still wasn't sure how he could break himself off from the Triad without drawing serious backlash from Zolt and the others. The solution came from an unlikely source. Mako had been sitting in his usual spot for about three hours, drinking tea in the smoky room as he pored over his notes when the door opened and several people shuffled in out of the rainstorm outside. Hearing the voice of Chan from the shipping department, Mako didn't bother wasting attention better spent on arithmetic. The room was almost always full of rowdy gang members and bar patrons on the last night of the week. After a while he hardly listened to the sounds of the door through the rest of the noise. A few seconds later, Mako heard a gasp and looked up in alarm. What he saw gave him such surprise that Mako sloshed tea all over the open page of his book.

It was Bolin, who upon spotting his older brother emitted quite the feminine squeak and clapped his hands over his mouth. Mako stood up, knocking his seat backward to the floor suddenly enough to draw attention from the men at the card table. He demanded to know what Bolin was doing here. He turned to the nearest person (it happened to be Zolt) and repeated the question in a louder voice, as if Lightning Bolt Zolt might not have heard him. It was a breach of contract, he said. Zolt, Chan, Bolin, and the few others in the room all stared in amazement at Mako's outburst. Eventually Zolt lifted a hand and pointed directly at Bolin, though he kept his eyes on Mako.

"That's your brother?" he said. When Mako nodded, he gave a low whistle. "See, I'da never guessed that! Chan, did you pick this kid up?"

Chan replied that Bolin had showed up at the docks, looking for work. He said that Bolin had hauled some crates in the storage building. Nothing crooked, he said. Zolt was satisfied at this answer and seemed to think that Mako should be, too.

"See, Mako? Nothing crooked. Let the boy do his share and we'll send him home with a couple extra bucks."

Mako wanted to protest. Bolin looked terrified at having been caught, but could not find words when he opened his mouth. The brothers shared a long look. Chan went to the bar, got Bolin's payment (ten yuans), and handed it over before steering the Earthbender toward the door. Instead of breaking the silence, he ducked his head and followed Chan back outside, offering a halfhearted wave as he went.

Only then did Mako realize that tea was seeping into the book. Cursing and red-faced, he mopped the mess with his sleeve while Zolt looked on as if Mako were a mildly entertaining show.

When Bolin arrived home that evening, the brothers had a rare argument that ended only when they heard a sound from inside the adjacent building and realized they had been shouting. Mako sighed and rubbed his hands over his face and repeated that he was not okay with this. Bolin countered that Mako couldn't keep him from doing his share anymore. He was fifteen and he was old enough and strong enough, and he could handle working for the gang. At last Mako had to consent to the plan, as long as Bolin promised not to take any jobs other than lifting for the shipping department. Mako had finally gotten out of dangerous work. If either of them was arrested, they could be charged and barred from tryouts.

Bolin went to sleep relieved, Mako did not. But neither of the brothers got themselves arrested by tryouts, and Bolin's new job wound up helping more than not. As usual, he was friendly and, unlike Mako, laughed and joked enough to make a friend out of the meanest gangster. Chan and his men quickly grew to like Bolin and his lighthearted demeanor. They especially liked his strength. He could unload a cargo boat in half the time it took the others, and once unknowingly saved them all from arrest by sweet-talking an undercover police officer posing as a captain's wife. Still, Mako worried that something had to give. Bolin would get caught and arrested, or someone who knew Mako before he inherited this office job would disclose the nature of his original work and Bolin would do something outrageous.

What wound up happening was that Bolin let it slip that he and Mako were going for the tournament again. The person he told reported to Chan, who told Lightning Bolt Zolt, who sat down beside Mako one might after the other men had left for the night.

"So, Mako," he said in a casual tone, "I hear you plan to leave us."

After listening to Mako's panicked response, he laughed and clapped a hand on Mako's shoulder and told him not to worry. He'd known from the start that Mako was the opportunistic type—he only worked to accomplish a means and disappear. And that, according to Zolt, was fine as long as Mako met certain terms. He knew a lot about the inner workings of the business now—too much, frankly—but that was okay. Mako could enter the tournament, and if he lost, he had proven his worth and was welcome back any time. If he won, he and Bolin were free to never come back. All Zolt asked was Mako's unconditional silence regarding the workings of the business (the consequences of failure being extremely unpleasant for both Mako and Bolin)... and ten percent of the prize, should Mako win the whole tournament.

Mako agreed without hesitation. Even minus ten percent, the winnings were more than he had ever dreamed of having. It was a small price to pay for freedom. The only catch was that they had to get there first.

Mako turned eighteen. Tryouts arrived. Mako arrived at work early that morning for what he hoped would be the last time, and spent most of the shift making a meticulous instruction sheet for balancing the books. If they did make it into the tournament, he didn't want to have to come back to train the next bookkeeper. As soon as he set down his pencil, he swung his jacket around his shoulders and headed for the door. Triad members wished him luck as he went (in varying ways; some pat him on the back, others bid him farewell, one person offered to eliminate the competition for him). Mako wasn't sorry to leave. When he arrived at home, Bolin had prepared for them both a sizeable lunch from one of Mako's pre-prepared food containers. They ate, sat around for about an hour, and when they could procrastinate no longer they left for the arena. Win or no win, said Mako, they'd show all those well-fed and well-funded teams what hard work could earn.

Considering their abysmal performance the previous year, Mako thought they fared quite well in the ring. At the very least, it was an admirable tryout for both of the brothers. They weren't immediately accepted into the teams roster, but nor were they immediately rejected. Because their team lacked a permanent Waterbender, the judge panel had to first go through the teams that had all three members. Once they had picked their top teams, they would go through the pool of people without a full team (these such people were called "floaters") and pair together players who looked promising. To the brothers, this meant potential separation. Mako hoped this wouldn't be the case—they worked far better together than apart, a factor which he assumed was apparent during their tryout—but even if they were divided, this technically meant that they had two chances at progressing through the season. More games meant more income, if they both wound up on winning teams. They left the practice court with their clothes plastered to their sweaty bodies, Bolin's optimistic cheer a comfortable contrast to Mako's wariness. The panel leader had told them to check back in a few days' time to see if they had been placed. In the meantime, they would have to wait. They went home, heated up a basin of water, and washed both themselves and their clothes.

Three days later, they ran to the arena at the designated time. Upon spotting their names on the list, under the title: "Unnamed Team: Earthbender – Bolin, Firebender – Mako, Waterbender – Hasook" they created a loud enough scene to attract attention from passers-by. They immediately met up with the Waterbender, who had filed in with all the others for the revealing of the roster. He seemed nice, if a bit shy, and agreed to start practicing as soon as possible. Being in the system meant that they could schedule blocks of time in the gym, so the three of them picked a handful of afternoons and submitted their request. Bolin wasted no time in naming the team the Fire Ferrets, a name to which Hasook was indifferent.

A few problems followed in the wake of this accomplishment, the first of which occurred during official registration. While filling out paperwork, Mako faltered over the section entitled "mailing address". He'd never received a letter in his life. An address had never occurred to him, but he couldn't very well write "the alcove behind Jun's Tea Shop". He spied one of the officials talking with a muscley old man in one corner. Mako approached, requested a quick word, and then asked if the address part of the registration was absolutely necessary. The official replied that of course it was, how else were they to get in contact with the team members? And then he strode off. Mako had a brief moment of panicked despair. They had made it all this way, had trained and fought for their place on the roster, only to fail at the paperwork.

Mako bit his lip and stared down at the paper. He would have to make up an address. Maybe he would put the address of the shop, and then somehow try to intercept any incoming mail or—or visitors, or—

He had just resigned himself to this solution when he heard a voice say, "You're Mako, right?" Mako turned and saw that the old man was standing there, squinting across the short distance at the Firebender. He introduced himself as Toza. He said he was in charge of the building as both the Pro Bending gym manager and caretaker of the building. He asked, without an ounce of hesitation, if the brothers were homeless. Mako, after a pause, replied that they were. Toza and Mako appraised one another for a moment. It seemed to Mako as if Toza had caught himself speaking before actually considering what he was saying, and was trying to cram a whole lot of thinking into a very little space of time.

Finally, after looking Mako over, he shrugged and offered the brothers the apartment upstairs. He said he had just kicked the last tenants out (the word he used was "hooligans") and wanted some responsible young people to look after it. They could pay rent after they'd won a few games, he said. And in the meantime, he could use a little help prepping the building for the upcoming season.

Though nothing about Toza's appearance struck Mako as suspect, he nevertheless hesitated. He didn't know this stranger at all, much less trust him. They could just use the address and continue living in their shelter, but it didn't make much sense to turn down (probably) perfectly livable housing so close to the gym, especially if they weren't paying cash for it. Mako looked down at the half-finished paperwork in his hands. Once again, just like so many other instances in his life, he found that he was without choices. Tentatively he accepted the man's proposition, shook his hand, and turned around to look for his brother (who he found flirting with one of the women on the Rabiroos team). Best not interrupt him if he wasn't getting into any trouble. Mako shared one last nod with Toza, scribbled the address of the arena onto the address line, and passed in the registration forms. In exchange the panelist handed him another, taller stack of papers and said he needed it back in a month's time.

In the following days, the brothers made some serious progress. Mako had them move out as soon as possible, after meeting Toza once more to flesh out the details of the arrangement. He found that he liked the old man, gruff as he was, and promptly lost his sense of alarm after the first few minutes. The first question Mako asked, when he sat down at Toza's kitchen table with the caretaker and his (significantly less crotchety) husband, was why Toza had offered up the apartment so quickly—they were a pair of homeless boys who could have been anyone from drug dealers to murderers. They talked for over an hour over bowls of soup. Toza explained that he had seen Mako and Bolin many times over the years, hanging around Republic City Station or fighting in the park. When he heard Mako talking to the supervisor about his lack of address, the apartment just popped into his head. He'd offered it up before he could even consider that it was a bad idea, but he held fast to his word. If the brothers abided by the contract, they were welcome to stay as long as they needed to.

It was strange to have a conversation with an adult that didn't revolve around money or crimes of any sort. Quite the opposite, Toza was a lifelong Pro Bending fan who loved the sport too much to let it go, and stepped up to take the position when the previous arena caretaker died. His husband, Leio, had Pro Bended for years until an injury to his shoulder put him out of the business at a young age. They didn't mind Mako's guardedness, but patiently listened and offered advice about the upcoming challenges of the tournament from the perspective of a fan and of a retired player. By the time he left, Mako was practically skipping.

The only one displeased about the housing change was Bolin, who appreciated the opportunity to live in the arena but nevertheless considered the shelter his rightful home. Unlike Mako, Bolin had a habit of attaching emotion to places and things, as if the patch of dirt where he had slept for almost seventeen years was somehow more sacred than all the others. He carried his two bags of possessions with his chin tucked sadly against his chest, glancing over his shoulder for one last moment of home before heading to the arena. Mako had no such affection for this place, but he did say goodbye. After they had finished moving out and the shops had closed for the night, Mako dug two copies of the daily paper out of the bin. He clipped out from both the announcement of this season's teams, circled the brothers' names, and wrote "thank you" in the margins. These he slid under the doors of the two shops whose property he had lived on for most of his life.

Bolin got over his heartbreak when he saw that the one-room apartment had couches and a private toilet. Mako became quick friends with the stove and tried out recipes that he had previously read at the library (modified to fit their narrow budget). From the windows they could see the entire city, from the beautiful houses of White Falls to smokestacks in the Dragon Flats borough. The place was tiny, but compared to their past home it was like living in a mansion. Mako allowed himself one day of relaxation before he turned back to the paperwork, at which point he discovered two more puzzles: first they needed a doctor's approval of health before they could even begin practice sessions in the gym; second, they had to provide legal documentation of their identities to ensure that nobody entered the tournament under a false name.

The medical part he could handle; tucked away somewhere in the bottom of his bag was a handwritten note on a tiny slip of paper, detailing the location of a clinic that held monthly walk-in hours for free. For their documentation, however, Mako would have to return to the only place that held the official records: the orphanage.

Mako had assumed that trying to get their files would be a hassle, since they had fled illegally. He wasn't even sure if they still had that information. It could just as well be that they tossed out the paperwork on missing kids, or else handed it over to the police. Reality, for once, was kinder than Mako had assumed it would be. The orphanage did, in fact, have their documents in possession. The worst part was actually having to enter the old building and confront the memory of what it had been like to stay there. Bolin was more visibly afflicted than his brother, but the atmosphere of the place stole Mako's ease as well. They arrived at lunchtime, when the kids could be seen through the glass observation window in their cafeteria. Mako shuddered to remember the grey wool uniforms and the retribution paid for asking for seconds. He didn't recognize any of the faculty. This was probably a blessing, as the only ones he remembered were the ones who had prompted his escape. The woman they spoke with seemed much kinder. She had the exhausted air of someone dealing with too much stress all at once, but she was more than happy to help the brothers in their venture.

Mako and Bolin were each privately questioned in regard to details in the file (information such as age, first address of house, how their parents had died, why they had abandoned their files, etc). Once they had shown beyond a reasonable doubt that they were the individuals to whom the information belonged, put in a formal request with town hall to have the documents released. The woman took their pictures, their fingerprints (to be cross-examined by microscope with the tiny ones in their files), and sent them off with the suggestion that they return in one week. Mako would have preferred to never return, but he wasn't about to complain after the process had been so simple. Off to the clinic they went.

They had never been to the clinic before, which, they mutually realized, was probably not good. Their parents brought them to regular checkups before their untimely death, but after that the brothers just treated illnesses when they occurred. Fevers were treated with rest and fluids, colds with an extra layer of clothing and a larger food ration, bumps and scrapes left to heal on their own. Thus far they had been lucky in the health department, with the worst incident being a nasty and debilitating rash Bolin had contracted from using the public restroom barefoot. The brothers laughed at their naïveté as they walked, recalling how they had solved the problem by covering Bolin's legs in a topical cream that Mako stole from the first aid kit in the library. They'd had no idea what they were doing, but apparently they did it right. Bolin suggested that they drop the tournament and instead become doctors.

Hope Clinic was a smaller subdivision of the City Hospital, tucked away in one of the poorer neighborhoods. Bolin read the main lobby's sign while Mako looked for the free consultation hours. His love note from the Chief of Police said they were held on the first day of each month, but that was several years ago now (and wasn't that a terrifying thought?). Finally he found a small sign on the door, confirming the date and time, but the exact location wasn't listed. Mako wondered aloud if maybe they should have gone in the side door. Bolin responded that they could just follow "those guys" and pointed to where a flock of known vagabonds was passing through the far end of the lobby. The brothers hopped in at the end of the group, following them down several long, tile-lined hallways. Bolin gave an audible gasp when they reached the waiting room.

It was like a convention of the impoverished. Every single chair in the room—maybe fifty or so—was occupied, and those without chairs had found places to sit on the floor. They had to scoot through the crowd to get to the front desk, where they waited in line to earn their place in line. They filled out more paperwork, Mako grudgingly handed over his tournament forms to be filled out by the doctor, and then they found a place to sit next to a group of middle-aged women. One of the women spotted the boys and asked Bolin if they too were here for the free pap smear, which earned a startled look from Bolin and set the other ladies into howling laughter.

The flyer in the lobby had neglected to warn them that the wait would be over six hours, but neither Mako nor Bolin minded much. They, like many others in the room, were particularly adept at waiting. At one point Bolin went for a walk around to stretch his legs, returning a few minutes later with the news that he had discovered the snack cart. Mako said he didn't have any money. A lady from the group welcomed them to the club.

Finally Bolin nudged Mako awake to tell him their names had been called. They followed the assistant into the adjacent hallway, where they were hastily ushered into separate rooms (not before they could wish each other good luck).

The orphanage had for some reason not affected Mako as much as it should. This room, however, immediately gave him the urge to run. There was something about the smallness of it, with its windowless walls shrinking down to where he sat on the examination table. The attendant told him to undress to his underpants and then left him alone to do so. Mako swung around in alarm at the click of the door, as it he expected someone to be standing behind him. Warily he looked about, taking in the bare walls and the collection of metal instruments on the nearby counter. He undressed and sat back down. A few minutes later there was a knock, and in came an older woman in a white jacket.

"Hello," said the woman.

Mako offered a strained smile in response. She introduced herself as Dr. Le and jumped into the examination without exchanging pleasantries.

She grabbed one of the handheld tools—a small flashlight plugged into the wall—and used it to peer into his eyes, his ears, and his nose. Mako gagged when she stuck a flat wooden stick into his mouth and scrutinized his throat. She prodded him all over, timed his pulse, measured his blood pressure, and listened to his lungs. Then she left the room. When she returned ten minutes later, she had a clipboard in her hand. Dr. Le announced that she had just examined Bolin and, because the Earthbender had listed Mako as his guardian, could tell Mako that Bolin was very healthy and very strong, all things considered. A little nutrient deficient, but most of her customers were.

Mako replied that he was glad. He asked about his own condition, which the doctor proclaimed to be fine aside from slightly elevated blood pressure. She advised that he do his best to drink more water, admitting that she understood that clean water was difficult to come by. All in all, she thought the brothers had done a fine job staying healthy. Mako was free to go as soon as she asked a few more questions.

Dr. Le squinted at her clipboard for a moment. She asked when his last check-up was, and Mako said that he didn't remember. She asked him if he had headaches, dizziness, or any strange symptoms, and Mako said that he didn't. She asked him if he was sexually active. Mako hesitated before answering "not at the moment." She asked him if he used protection. Mako didn't answer. Dr. Le looked up from her notes.

"You don't?" There was no surprise in her voice, only a sharp attention that wasn't present before. Mako had the strange sense that, for the first time, she was studying his reaction instead of his physiology. He shrugged one shoulder up and down. A pause followed, and then, after assuring him that the question was for purely medical purposes, she asked how many partners he'd had.

Somewhere in the last few questions he had let his eyes slip from the doctor to the wall behind her, and only once he realized that he was staring at the ground did he force himself to look up again. There was no point in lying about it, though the thought crossed his mind to do so. The doctor was completely useless to him unless he was honest. Mako said that he wasn't exactly sure. He shared with her a long, mutually blank-faced stare for a whole five seconds before she put down the clipboard and promptly left the room. Mako waited, half-naked and strangely unemotional about the entire exchange. There was only one issue he really cared about, which he cleared up the moment Dr. Le returned carrying a small box.

Mako asked if she'd told Bolin. She asked if she looked like an idiot.

This response left him adequately satisfied, and the last bit of anxiety melted in with indifference. Dr. Le announced that she was going to draw some blood. Mako didn't care about this, either, until he saw the great big needle in her hand and privately thought that he'd rather die of some awful disease than ever let it near his skin. He bit the inside of his cheek and turned away as she stuck him with the needle and filled a vial with his blood. She then asked him, in a notably gentler voice, if she could check him over once more. He replied that she could. The doctor scanned his skin again, asking him questions as she did so. Some of the questions made him quite uncomfortable, but he answered truthfully nonetheless. She picked him over inch by inch, rifling through the hair on his scalp and inspecting his skin from the neck down. By the time she straightened up and told him that he at least _looked_ all right, Mako felt that she had turned his inner box of secrets over and dumped its contents all across the floor. She said that she understood how difficult his position must be, but that he should have come in sooner. He had the right, she said, to medical care.

"I don't have any rights," said Mako.

The doctor's eyes widened at his earnest bluntness. "That is absurd. Of course you have rights! The law states that every person in this country is entitled to health and safety of person."

Mako offered a blank stare at this sentiment. Dr. Le sighed. "Well, the system's not perfect. But I wouldn't volunteer to work a sixteen hour shift every month for free if I didn't believe it could help to uphold those rights."

Dr. Le returned to her work, clearly ruffled by Mako's comment. She told him that she was going to run some blood work to make sure that he didn't have any infections or diseases, and that this wouldn't cost him anything. They would have the results in a few days' time, at which point the clinic would be in contact with him. To ensure confidentiality, she explained, they wouldn't send the results directly to his address. Instead they had a different scheme: if everything was fine, she would send his Pro-Bending forms all filled out and with her signature. If something was wrong, she would send a note from the clinic, thanking the brothers for their visit. The latter message would be an indication to Mako that he should stop by immediately. Mako agreed to all the terms, and she sent him back to the lobby with her best wishes.

Mako found Bolin fidgeting nervously in the waiting room. The brothers left together, Bolin talking nonstop about his experience on the examination table. At one point he said he was sure that Dr. Le had left a bruise. Mako asked what he meant, and Bolin answered with the proclamation that she'd handled him more like a sack of rice than a person.

Mako said he hadn't noticed. Bolin went on about it a bit more, then sighed and looked down at the smiley face on his tunic and said that at least he got this nifty sticker out of the deal.

xXx


	4. Chapter 4

A/n: Welcome back! Many thanks to those who read and reviewed last chapter... you're a spot of sunlight in an otherwise depressing fic!

Please see the first chapter for an extensive list of warnings, as well as a general disclaimer.

Thanks especially to wherewulf, aka one of the most insightful, talented, and kind betas (people) I have ever known!

* * *

_Part IV_

The arrival of their completed paperwork a few days later wrought no visible reaction out of Mako; inwardly he allowed himself one good sigh of relief. Training began immediately. Mako realized that he and the Waterbender didn't click very well as people, but as long as they could manage as team mates, he couldn't complain. Apparently Hasook was friends with some members from another team—the Wolfbats, who hailed from White Falls and made the Pro Bending arena look like a crime scene—but as there was already a talented Waterbender on board, he'd been shirked and sent to try out as a single player. He was quite bitter about it, which was very annoying to Mako as it often yielded long-winded tangents about how they didn't stand a chance against the Wolfbats and may as well not try. He was prone to missing practice, or showing up in the morning with his sobriety in debatable condition. After his fourth absence, he and Mako got into such a shouting match that Bolin had to physically step between them and stop a fist fight. Afterward, Hasook's attendance became much more consistent. Slowly, with constant effort, the Fire Ferrets began to find their rhythm as a team.

Because it was the best source of entertainment for many people (and a huge money-maker for the city, drawing spectators from all over the country), the Pro Bending season lasted for most of the year. It began with a month of training for all of the teams, then launched into several more months of matches, and finally ended with a huge tournament. The Fire Ferrets suffered huge losses at the start of the season. More experienced teams tossed them into the drink like an afterthought. Mako became legitimately worried about their prospects.

They did, however, have some advantages. None of the team dealt with stage fright, a plague that could send an unsuspecting player into a full-blown panic attack. Quite the contrary, Bolin loved being at the center of attention and used it to his advantage. He got a spot on a sports radio show, where he dramatically told the story of his and Mako's struggle out on the streets and won the team a bit of fame. Soon the Fire Ferrets had a small but dedicated following Bolin's fangirls, mostly) who wanted to see the underdogs succeed. And though Mako would never admit that the crowd's support helped boost his confidence, he discovered that the team began winning much more often when he could hear their names in the crowd.

The money helped, too, of course. The trouble with _that_ was that suddenly the brothers had bills to pay, and after the winnings had been picked clean by Hasook, the landlord, and the grocery store, there was nothing left for Mako's savings. All the more motivation to keep winning the games, he thought.

Soon one month had passed, and then another, and the Fire Ferrets started resembling a functional set. The media responded with fascination, inspired by Bolin's storytelling. Sports radio hosts were talking about the Fire Ferrets far more than they usually did for rookie teams. They thought the team was oddly charming, with its animated Earthbender, soft spoken Waterbender, and super-serious Firebender. For weeks they raved about the team's improvements, all the while dissecting the players' personalities as if they were fictional characters in a book or show. Much to Mako's confusion, they were especially interested in him. He was the team captain, who was perfectly capable of talking in interviews but shied away from the media's bright light. Even more puzzling was his gameplay. There was something about the way he moved, something in his look. Eventually, one of the reporters had an epiphany:

"I'll tell you what it is," said the reporter over the radio, while Bolin and Mako wiped down the gym equipment for Toza. "Earlier today you heard my interview with Jiun from the Mooselions, and he said something that really struck me. He said that when you play the Ferrets, and you're giving everything you've got, there's nothing you can do to faze Mako. He just comes at you with this—this blank expression, and this complete lack of fear. You smack 'im down and he just gets back up, you hit him with a wall of rock and it's like he doesn't even feel it. He' got nothing to lose and everything to gain, and the result of that is just… it's terrifying! Mako may not be able to keep the Ferrets in line, but let me tell you what, the kid's a master of self control. I'll bet he's one heck of a Lightningbender."

Some of the other media outlets were less sensitive in their descriptions. One article flat-out said Mako was probably so cool under pressure because he'd gotten his childhood beaten out of him on the streets. Toza seemed to think along the same lines, though his approach was far more constructive. The gym manager caught Mako leaving practice one morning and asked him if he had ever Bended lightning. Mako told him that he had learned the forms, but never tried for fear of hurting himself or somebody else. Toza grunted and crossed his arms and said it was a damn shame, that Mako would probably be spectacular and that it was a great source of income for some people. All Mako could do was shrug one shoulder; if he'd had the money for lessons, he would have learned years ago. And Toza, being far kinder than he appeared while screaming at teenagers who snuck into matches, said money was no good reason to abandon it. Fifty years ago, he said, those in need could always pursue mastery of the art. It was a more honorable system than they had now, where lessons went to those who could pay the cost. Toza said that he had a friend who owed him a favor and, leaving Mako standing confusedly in the gym, departed from the building at once.

Toza's friend was a woman about Toza's age, who agreed to show Mako the basics of Lightning Bending free of charge. Mako was humbled by this arrangement, thanking the woman so many times that she eventually told him to shut up. She had him demonstrate what he already knew. Mako went through the forms that Bolin had written down all those months ago, slipping through the motions with well-rehearsed ease. In just a few hours he had tweaked his poses to near perfection and learned the physical science behind the art. Two days later, while standing with his teacher and Bolin in an open rock-ball field, Mako felt lightning leave his fingers for the first time. It was exhilarating and terrifying and sent him shooting backward across the grass. As Bolin helped him struggle to his feet, the master declared that he was a natural. For the next months, Mako spent any and all free time practicing. He skipped meals to go out and toss bolts into the sky. He reviewed the forms every morning before he and Bolin went jogging, and again just before bed.

He couldn't be sure why the lightning came so easy to him, sprung out from his fingertips as if it had been waiting inside him all along. The master said that only those with true peace of mind could Bend lightning. With so much stress surrounding him at all times, Mako didn't think his mind was particularly peaceful. Then again, she also referred to lightning as the cold-blooded fire. Mako thought back to the darker part of his life and remembered how easy it used to be to reach inside and shut down. Even now, it was easy. Maybe after all these years, he had locked himself out and forgotten where he'd stashed the key.

But no matter. The past had doubtless impaired him, but now it had given him a means of moving forward. Within a few months he had all but mastered the technique, and used this new talent to pick up shifts at the power plant. With a little extra money for the brothers' savings, Mako refocused his energy on the Pro Bending season. The Fire Ferrets earned more victories than losses thanks to tireless practice and a bit of luck. The tournament loomed closer, hovering over their heads at all hours of the day. Two days before the match that would decide if they qualified for the tournament, Mako and Hasook got into a verbal dispute over Hasook's attitude that almost escalated into physical violence. Once again Bolin rescued his teammates from a potential hospital trip, desperately trying to blame their frazzled nerves on the match rather than their dislike for one another. They narrowly won their next match, with almost no help from Hasook.

On the night of the qualifier, when the no-good-no-show abandoned his team and the brothers had all but given up, Korra gave them another chance. He had been annoyed by her appearance in the team room, and then embarrassed by his obvious lack of tact, and finally… a little bit overwhelmed by her presence. The way she came on, he was at first convinced that her surplus of excitement meant that she was one of Bolin's fangirls. Only once he realized that this was none other than the new Avatar did her strange demeanor make sense. Korra was strong, beautiful, friendly, and shoved her way right into Mako's life without his permission. He wasn't sure how to deal with such an unexpected (and, frankly, distracting) visitor, but Mako willed himself not to forget the reason they had come this far in the season. Whatever superficial reaction he might have to her, any and all feelings were irrelevant.

Having Korra on the team meant that the Fire Ferrets had to make some serious adjustments to their team strategy, and that was the extent to which Mako was willing to acknowledge their relationship. Unfortunately, it became difficult to separate his work-related thoughts of Korra to… casually-related thoughts. After some finagling they found she fit in with the brothers much better than Hasook had (though Hasook had been so difficult toward the end that all Korra had to do was show up and she did a better job). Mako admired her talent and reveled in her spirit, but he soon realized that his admiration was not wholly professional and, almost without realizing it, he overcompensated by being even more terse than usual. Korra didn't put up with his attitude, but Bolin blamed it on stress and said that as long as they got through the tournament, he didn't care how grumpy Mako got.

Bad news from Butakha brought disaster, which began with Bolin putting on a Pabu circus and ended with his near demise alongside many of Mako's former co-workers. Standing alongside Korra at the Equalist rally, seeing grown men publicly humiliated and traumatized while his brother inched forward in line toward losing his Bending, was undeniably the worst moment of Mako's life—worse even than the night the Firebender killed his parents and let him live to remember it. He almost didn't have the extra mind space to process what Amon was doing. One by one, the gangsters stood and fought and lost. With their Bending gone, they sank down against the floorboards and wept until the Equalists scraped them up and dragged them away. Mako found himself alarmingly unsurprised. Amon would never allow for them to fight if there was a chance of victory. Of course they lost. They had to lose.

Mako had not forgotten that the Triple Threat Triad had kept him from starvation, nor did he forget that Lightning Bolt Zolt had offered him up to the monsters and kept the profits for himself. He watched Zolt's demise, watched his infamous lightning dwindle to fire and then to smoke. Zolt drooped to the ground, helpless and feeble and defeated by someone who had allowed him to fight but known he would not win. Mako watched, and he did not look away.

Somehow Mako upheld his composure—he would never understand how he did it, but only his task-oriented brain could have done it—until later that night, when Korra dropped the brothers off at their home. Only once they crossed the apartment's threshold did Mako realize how close he had come to losing his brother. He turned around and saw Bolin frozen just inside the doorway, cradling Pabu in one arm while the other stood him upright against the wall. Bolin, who made jokes to chase the world's terrors away, had flushed red with shock. The rush of urgency was draining from their veins, taking with it their energy and strength. Mako looked hard at his brother and felt himself begin to tremble. A long silence ensued.

Bolin saw the panic rising in Mako and tried to make save him. "Today was fun, wasn't it?" he said, but his voice caught halfway and he pressed his fist to his mouth to stifle a sob.

Shaking his head, Mako strode across the gap so fast that Pabu barely had time to scurry away before Mako had engulfed his brother in a gorilla-bear hug. Bolin melted. He bawled into Mako's shoulder, fast breaths hitching with near hyperventilation as he tried again and again to apologize. Mako took Bolin's apologies and passed them back tenfold. His knees gave out, sending them sinking to the wooden floor, spilling hot tears down his face and chin until they were both too tired to cry anymore.

With Bolin safe and the tournament deadline approaching, Mako returned to the puzzle that was his debt to Butakha. He had tried every tactic he could think of, pored over books in the library for any sort of clue, asked Toza and the other Benders in the tournament for their insight, but to no success. The bank had laughed at him and had him escorted from the building. He had no contacts for potential sponsorships. The only friends he had were just as poor as he. There was no amount of working odd jobs or fundraising that could get him thirty thousand yuans within a few days. All he had, aside from robbing a bank, was one option. Just days before the payment deadline, Mako stepped out of the factory where he had worked a long night shift. At the first intersection he walked in the direction opposite his apartment, dutifully ignoring the throbbing of his tired feet.

In the midst of rush hour, nobody noticed Mako drop out of the crowd and slip into the Triad's headquarters. To the unknowing onlooker the building's façade looked as it always did, like a neglected and standoffish bar. Inside, the remnants of the Equalist ambush were still scattered across the room. Someone had righted the tables and chairs and thrown a tarp over the hole in the wall, but broken glass ground between Mako's shoes and the flooring as he stepped through the entrance. The place was unguarded, empty save for him and just one other person.

Taro, who had been standing over the bar counter with his head bent over a book, looked up at the sound of Mako's footfalls. His perplexed expression quickly settled into an amused half-smirk. The change gave Mako an instant and overwhelming urge to flee, but he kept his feet planted where they were. Ignoring Taro's pleasantries, Mako asked to speak to whoever was in charge now. Taro opened his arms and looked around, as if searching for Lightning Bolt Zolt under one of the tables. He said that in case Mako hadn't heard, Zolt and several of the higher-ups were going to be away for a while, and in the meantime Taro was looking after the business. Then he asked what Mako wanted.

One deep breath later, Mako he told Taro of the deal he'd made with Zolt. He explained how his victory in the tournament meant a cut of the winnings for the Triad, and that all he needed to make it happen was a loan of thirty thousand yuans. He'd done the books for several months and knew they had more than enough to make it happen. Should he win, he could pay it back in full plus five percent more than what he'd originally promised Zolt. If not, he could come back as bookkeeper and earn back what he had lost. No doubt the Equalists had driven a hole into the organization. They could probably use a little extra help. Taro picked up the pencil he'd been using in the book and bit down on the eraser as he pondered Mako's proposal. After several moments, he tapped it against the page in his book. He asked Mako to step behind the counter and tell him if these numbers sounded right.

Ducking around tables and debris as he went, Mako strode across the room. He slipped behind the counter alongside Taro, accepted the pencil when it was handed to him, and skimmed the information on the page. Whoever took over Mako's position appeared to be incompetent. The first few lines mimicked the format Mako had used for his equations and layout, but in half a page the writing had devolved into practically nonsense. Mako began scribbling, half-listening to the sound of Taro rummaging through the cabinets behind him, glasses clinking, the splash of liquid in a cup. Taro took a noisy sip of whatever he had poured and sighed contentedly. He asked Mako what he thought. Mako answered that he was looking at a disaster. There was a dull thud as Taro set his glass on the countertop and peered over Mako's shoulder at the book. Mako took this as invitation to explain and, pointing to the sums with the pencil tip, began to recount the mistakes the previous user had made. When he was done with that, he leapt straight into correcting the math.

Taro took a sip of his drink, set it back down, asked in a half-jesting tone if Mako wanted his job back. Only if the Fire Ferrets lost the tournament, said Mako, though privately he thought that rejoining the Triad was below fleeing the country on his list of options.

Taro chuckled. "We'll see about that. The deal needs a little…work," he said, and only then did Mako realize that he could smell the alcohol on Taro's breath.

Mako froze. In his periphery he could see that Taro had set a hand on either side of Mako, effectively trapping the Firebender between himself and the countertop. He swallowed back the rising panic and asked, very calmly, what Taro was doing.

"When the boss changes, the rules change," Taro said, reaching around Mako to close the budget book. "You'll get your cash, no problem. But I'm gonna need a little more than your good word. I'm gonna need a little…" He shuffled forward, pinning Mako against the countertop with his hips, pressing against his back so Mako could feel Taro's lips on his ear when he whispered, "_insurance_."

Mako had no idea what Taro had been expecting, but it probably wasn't the sharp spike of pain that followed when Mako drove the pencil straight into the other man's thigh. Howling, Taro stumbled backward just in time to catch Mako's fist against his jaw. He fell back again, ducked a second swing, and landed a punch in the center of Mako's chest before toppling over sideways. Mako, too, fell to the floor with a sharp gasp, but he jumped back to his feet without pausing to regain his breath. Apparently the time he spent fighting his brother had done him some good—being pummeled with Earthbended discs in practice had rendered him all but immune to the shock of physical hits. The fourteen year old that Taro had so easily overpowered was gone.

"What, are you gonna zap me?" Taro spat. Mako glanced down and realized that he had assumed a stance to Bend lightning. Mako watched Taro pull the pencil from his thigh and toss it aside, all without breaking eye contact. Taro laughed. "Get your sorry ass out of here, Zolt Junior, before I kill you."

A large part of Mako wanted to stay and fight. Frowning down at the co-conspirator in four years of misery, Mako trembled with the want to put a bolt of lightning right through this man's ribcage. It would be so simple, so terribly easy to kill this man and dash out the back door without being spotted. And though Mako suspected doing so was now in the realm of things he _could_ do, he didn't. Instead he backed around the bar counter, slowly, poised to attack, and dropped his stance only when he disappeared back into the traffic outside. He had to catch the first trolley back to the arena, and he had to do it fast. For once, his objections to spending precious money were overruled by alarm.

Mako could feel the panic attack coming on. He was outdoors, under the safeguard of a public setting with the morning sun bright in the sky, but his chest still cramped under the strain of his frantic heart rate. Mako walked, closed his eyes and tried to regain control over his breathing. He was going to be okay. They were almost certainly out of the tournament now, though. Maybe he ought to have reconsidered instead of acting out in—no, what was he thinking? Mako rubbed his face and growled to himself and ignored the woman who started in alarm at the sound. By the time he reached the block with the trolley station, he was still shaken but no longer on the brink of a public meltdown. Nervously he tossed the frayed end of his scarf over his shoulder and looked over toward the station, where he stopped dead upon seeing that the trolley had started to drive away. Mako darted out into the street, intent on getting close enough to hop on the caboose—

_Wham_.

Asami Sato's entrance into Mako's life was not a particularly graceful moment for either of them. Mako went flying across the road, the dull ache in his solar plexus now forgotten under the impact of a moving moped. Even with hindsight, he couldn't explain what had prompted his reaction. He suspected that after a long shift at the factory and his close encounter with the Triple Threat Triad his emotions were flying out of control about his head, and they latched on to the first good thing that he saw. She took him over, a full-body invasion of his better judgment, and he'd brushed off her apology before he'd even heard it. He stared, both hyper-aware of his senses and of the soot covering most of his body, as she invited him to dinner.

Mako had learned many things during his stolen childhood, few of which were more important than this: There are some things you did not turn down after a lifetime of financial struggle, and one of them was a free meal. Especially when this meal was with a gorgeous woman who happened to think being a Pro Bender meant something. Mako accepted the date because it was a meal and because Asami may have been the most stunning person who had ever given him a speck of attention. He was surprised when they got along right away despite their different backgrounds, and even more so when the next day she and her father offered to sponsor the Fire Ferrets under the Future Industries name. She assured him that even though he accepted the sponsorship, he needn't feel obligated to see her anymore, not if he didn't want to. He accepted her next invitation for a date (a walk around the park) and from then on they were dating.

Mako had never dated. He'd spent a good deal of time with Nikka in the short-lived years of the night crew, had chatted and flirted with different people over the years, but he had never been committed like this. It was strange, he thought, to report to someone other than himself and Bolin at the end of the day. Even stranger was that his free time was no longer spent reading or hanging out with Bolin, but rather wrapped up in whatever Asami had planned for them. Usually Bolin was invited on these excursions, but he only ever agreed to come along when there was food involved, and sometimes not even then.

Mako had a nervous inkling that the two of them were going to move right along the expected path, and indeed, less than a week after he and Asami became an official couple, Asami invited him to stay when he dropped her off at the estate. When he wondered aloud how Hiroshi would feel about this sleepover, she answered that he was in Ba Sing Se for a conference that weekend. And anyway, she said, if her father were home he could just climb up to her room via the garden ladder out back. She'd done it hundreds of times. Casting one last wary look around, checking to see if any of the estate's staff were still up at this late hour, Mako followed Asami up the stairs. He phoned Toza at the arena and asked him to tell Bolin he'd be back in the morning (Toza agreed only after chastising Mako for calling so bloody late).

He'd never been in Asami's bedroom before. It was as grandiose as the rest of the estate, at least twenty times the size of Mako and Bolin's alleyway shelter and a thousand times more decorated. He was sure that if she turned out the lights he could get lost in here, like it was a suburb of the city itself. The bed could easily fit the two of them five times over, it was so spacious. There was furniture that Mako didn't know the names of, and probably couldn't pronounce if he'd read them in a book. They removed their shoes upon entering and tucked them behind the door.

The room was in a remote section of the house, far from guest rooms, the staff's quarters, and the master bedroom. Arms hanging limply at his sides, Mako stood in the doorway as Asami flitted about the room, turning the radio to a quiet music station and grabbing a stack of magazines off the book shelf. She turned around, grinning broadly at him as she headed for the couch, and asked if he'd ever read Benders Illustrated. He hadn't, but he'd heard of it and Bolin had done an interview for the team a few months back. The subscription was twelve yuans a month or something equally absurd. Asami said she'd been reading it since she was ten years old. It was her favorite magazine, and she'd had covered the bedroom walls with articles and photos if it wasn't harmful to the wallpaper.

The moment Mako joined her on the couch, she shot up to her feet and announced she'd forgotten to grab drinks from the kitchen. Mako said that it was all right, he didn't need one, but she disappeared nonetheless and returned about a minute later with two glasses of soda pop. She told him to put his feet up as she grabbed a small table and dragged it over, then set the drinks down and sidled up right next to him.

Benders Illustrated was just as great as she'd said it was, with its glossy photos (some even hand-painted with color) and in-depth analysis of the teams. He was startled to see an image of himself, Bolin, and Hasook accompanying Bolin's interview on the Fire Ferrets. He read through this and more, holding the magazine out so Asami could see the pages from where she sat beside him. They repositioned several times until they were comfortable. Finally they wound up with Asami propping the magazine on her bent knees so that they could read while she snuggled into Mako's shoulder. All of this hard work was soon wasted, though. Within minutes the magazines lay abandoned in a pile and the couple had moved on to kissing instead. They had done this before but never like this, never with such a need to get close that their teeth bumped and their breaths hitched and their hands got tangled up. Asami rolled over on top of him, propping her weight on one arm and brushing her long hair out of the way. Then, still seeking his lips, his throat, she shifted up until she was straddling his lap. Mako's hands sought her thighs and rolled her forward. She responded to his touch by rocking against his hips, so smooth and so slow that he groaned against her mouth.

But something about the sound awakened the dormant terror in Mako's chest. Asami's solid weight was suddenly as stifling as it was stimulating, and for a moment he wasn't sure where he was. Gently, he set a hand on Asami's shoulder and eased her away from him. Their eyes met, instantly reorienting him in place. A relieved sigh escaped. Mako smiled, reaching up to brush Asami's hair behind her ears. She giggled. She probably should have taken off her lipstick, she said, but she thought he wore it well. Coral red was definitely his color. Glad for an excuse to step away, Mako excused himself to the bathroom where he locked the door out of habit and leaned over the sink to catch his breath.

Mako wiped away the smeared lipstick with a wet hand towel and tossed it aside. He braced his hands against the cool marble of the counter. His flushed reflection in the mirror surprised him, made him straighten up. There was no need to look so petrified. He was safe here, far away from the neighborhood where he had spent many nights as dark as this. Mako used his sleeve to rub off the last bit of red in the corner of his mouth and told himself to toughen up. He was almost nineteen years old, a grown man, and he had done this before. Granted, he had never done it with any semblance of normalcy, but he knew how it worked. All he had to do was keep his thoughts in line and the rest should follow naturally, pulled up out of his muscles like returning to an old habit.

He must have stood there for longer than he thought, for a soft knock on the door startled him out of his mental pep talk. From the other side, Asami asked him if everything was all right. He announced that he'd be out in a minute, then splashed his face under the faucet and towel-dried his hands. When he re-entered the room, Asami had just tossed a lipstick-stained napkin into the bin beside her bed. In his absence she had dimmed the lights and set out some supplies on the bedside table. She turned, saw him watching her, and timidly asked if he was sure he was all right. Mako didn't miss the implication behind the question. To reassure her of his intentions, he crossed over to where she stood and, cradling her face in his palms, kissed her.

"Yes," he said. "I'm very sure."

Asami beamed up at him. "Well then, what are we standing around for?"

Asami stuck the tips of her fingers into the back of Mako's waistband. Then, in a quick gesture, she dragged them around to the front until she had jerked his hips forward. Their thighs bumped together. The bed caught Mako around the back of the knees and he toppled backwards over it, landing with a surprised gasp on the springy mattress. He propped himself up on his elbows to watch her pull her shirt over her head. And then, when he could no longer bear to stand idle, he tugged her down beside him and did the rest of her clothes himself.

xXx

**TBC**


	5. Chapter 5

A/n: Welcome to the home stretch! A final resounding thank you to wherewulf, whose dedicated beta work kicks my ass into shape. Thank you, friend!

Confession: There are a few passages that I recycled extensively (read: pulled multiple phrases/descriptive sentences from one of my fics from a different fandom). Chances are you do not share this other fandom and do not even know about my other FFnet account and would never know the difference, but I would feel guilty if I didn't admit it publicly.

Warnings: Please see the first chapter for an extensive list of warnings, as well as a general disclaimer.

* * *

_Part V_

It was bizarre, Mako thought, to have a partner without control issues. Even when Asami thought she was being forceful, she wasn't. She was too kind, too playful, and even her worse nibbles and scratches felt like tickles to Mako. She was firm but not rough, assertive but never domineering, and she wanted Mako's full participation. Several weeks later found Mako still learning how to work in this manner; he was not used to being an equal and fumbled through the whole ordeal like a lost man trying to read a map in a different language. Either Asami was blissfully ignorant or Mako had fooled her into believing that he knew what he was doing. The only obvious fact was that Mako had done this before—he was comfortable with her body, eager to learn its nuances and quick to respond to her needs. All physical boundaries soon disappeared. Mako stayed over often, sometimes climbing up the side of the mansion (and feeling rather juvenile) to do so. He would feel bad for leaving Bolin alone so often except that Bolin always seemed to have a late date with one or more of his fangirls.

With his brother safe, victory in the tournament a possibility, and a girlfriend who offered friendship and security, Mako should have been happy. At times he thought he might be, at least marginally more than he was before, but certain things worried him still. The most debilitating (and one he least expected) was Korra. They didn't see much of each other outside the gym, but he looked forward to even the earliest of practice sessions in part because she was always there. When she joined Councilman Tarrlok's task force just a few weeks prior to the start of the first round, Mako began to fear for his team's prospects. When she stupidly challenged the most dangerous man in Republic City to a duel and almost lost her Bending, he realized that his fear had spread from his chances at victory to Korra as well.

She starred in a nightmare that plagued him several nights a week. They were in their Fire Ferrets getup, strewn across the floor of the gym with a dozen motionless bodies. Mako was always fully conscious, fully awake, struggling to stand as he watched Amon take Korra's Bending. He tried to shoot lightning but had for some reason lost control of his limbs. His veins wrestled against his skin, pulling him apart as if from the inside, forcing him into the dirt. And by the time he succeeded in freeing himself it was always too late. Korra fell, dead by dream logic, and Amon turned his mask to Mako who would then wake up in a sweaty panic. Before he could fall back to sleep, he'd have to get out of bed and look out the window to make sure the city was not in flames. When he was at home, he knew Bolin wouldn't wake at the sound. At Asami's place, he was careful to keep quiet as he snuck back across the room and slipped into bed.

Why Korra was the victim of his subconscious mind, Mako couldn't say. The whole dream would make much more sense if Bolin was killed, since Mako cared about his brother most in the world. Even Asami would make more sense. Of all the people he knew, Korra needed his concern least; she was stronger and braver than most, she had a support system that Mako couldn't fathom. She was the _Avatar_. Mako went back to sleep.

The first day of the tournament began as one of the more optimistic in Mako's life. The Fire Ferrets performed phenomenally in practice and left in high spirits, walking out of the arena into a warm and clear morning. Mako and Asami shared lunch at an outdoor restaurant on the water, where they sampled fine teas and watched the children waste perfectly edible tablescraps by feeding them to the pigeongulls. The food was wonderful, the company amiable, but no amount of food could distract him completely from the pre-match panic boiling in his gut. Asami saw this, the hesitation in his replies that meant that he was stressed, and had probably foreseen it. She asked if he needed to talk about it, he declined, afraid to upset his stomach. So when they returned to the estate and she had locked the bedroom door behind her, she offered to divert him in other ways.

Some time later, having just rolled over onto his back, Mako recalled one of the few things he remembered of his parents: they had adored one another. He couldn't remember their voices but their image still remained, that of two people so connected that they spoke with tiny gestures. When he was eight, mere weeks before his parents' death, Mako had asked his mother why she and daddy fell in love. She'd laughed and said there was no reason to it—it was something you knew when you had it, and once it happened there was no use trying to shake it. Looking back, he wasn't sure he understood it now any more than he had then. What it did tell him was something that he didn't want to hear.

Mako liked Asami—loved her, just a little bit—but he was not _in_ love. He enjoyed being with her and doing all the things that couples do, but he didn't miss her when she was gone. She didn't stomp about his mind during practice or when he was alone. There was only one woman had ever had that sort of control over him, and Mako was actively trying to ignore that nagging feeling.

Attachment was natural. Mako knew that from the start, with his lifelong themes of abandonment, he would latch on to her the moment he could trust her for real. And to the merit of this side, he could easily partake in this relationship forever. It might not be love, but it was camaraderie. It didn't conflict with his goal, The Goal, to escape from poverty for good. Quite the contrary, being with Asami meant that the goal was essentially accomplished. Mako liked to think that his fondness was genuine, and certainly his attraction to her was a part of it, but it wasn't the only thing. Shallow as he was to think it, there was no point in pretending that she wasn't wealthy enough to keep them safe forever. She was. And that… that worked for Mako just as well, especially since he really did like her anyhow.

Mako lifted his head enough to see her in the dim light. Asami had yet to catch her breath. His gaze seemed to pull her out of the blurry, soft aftermath of climax. She sat up on her elbows to look down at where he lay by her hip, shirtless with his pants hanging off his pelvis. She smiled. Yes, Mako could stay like this, easily, even if it meant he had to stamp Korra out of his brain for good.

But it was not love. The truth was in the air now, the wedge in the gap of Mako's feelings that lodged in his gut like splintering wood. The half that prompted him to kiss the inside of her thigh and tell her she was beautiful competed directly with the greedy, irrational side that wanted even more. Mako felt guilty about this, but this didn't keep him from answering "Yes" when she brushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and asked him if he was feeling any better.

Mako's perfectly agreeable and carefully constructed future was threatened by the end of the night. The Fire Ferrets won the match easily, channeling their hard work in practice into something even more glorious. Then Korra almost ruined everything. She opened up to him, she asked him out, she made doubt ring even louder in his ears. Mako tried to do the right thing and, ultimately, failed. He almost lost them the match. He led Korra on when he ought to have stayed behind. He kissed someone other than his girlfriend. And, most importantly, he hurt his little brother. Nobody—he didn't care how much he admired them—was worth risking his bond with Bolin. For that part alone, Mako was truly sorry and said as much. Everything else was a little more complicated.

Korra had been right about him. Mako was a liar. He decided not to tell Asami about the kiss because it was easier, because he didn't want to risk the repercussions of honesty. He lied to himself, too. Mako tried to convince himself that he hadn't kissed Korra back, that his pushing against her lips was not the result of a spark that ran over him like scalding water. Eventually they all decided to be friends. Mako sensed that he was being handed feelings that he was not at all equipped to work with. Yet even as he buried his doubt and marched his team on to the next phase, Mako wondered.

xXx

Throughout the entire training process, even with the added confusion of relationships and inter-team fights that chased them to this finale, the Fire Ferrets kept to their practice routine (with the exception of the previous practice, where nobody had showed up and Bolin was still too drunk on either feelings or liquor to walk at that point). Every morning they met at the gym for the second time slot. On non-match game days they practiced strategy. On the mornings of matches, they just met to warm up and review last-second plans.

But no matter the occasion, they started off the same: Korra always shuffled in five minutes before start with her hair still disheveled from sleep and her eyes half closed. Mako and Bolin had already jogged and eaten breakfast by now. Bolin stretched and watched Korra try to wrestle her hair into a ponytail while Mako prepared for her a cup of strong tea, forced it into her hands, and tapped his foot until she had set the empty cup down. Every morning, she insisted on listening to the radio as they practiced. Sometimes she turned it to a music station, but more often she tuned in to the news. She said that, as the Avatar, she should at least know what was happening around the city. If she weren't the Avatar Mako would have protested a little more; the back-and-forth drone of radio voices could be rather distracting. But then, she'd forsaken quality time on Tarrlok's task force to be here and was still more productive on half-attention than none at all. If she wanted to listen to the news, she was going to do it.

There was a full day between their last match and the final against the Wolf Bats, and Mako intended to use that time well. On the morning of the buffer day, the Fire Ferrets entered the gym to find that it was not empty. The White Falls Wolfbats had moved in and dumped their gym bags on the floor. Already the air was humid and heavy with the stink of sweat. Mako accosted Tahno, shoving the gym schedule under his nose and arguing until Bolin threatened to fetch Toza and have them kicked out. At that point Tahno did relent. He shrugged coolly and told his teammates to hit the shower, and out went his teammates like obedient children.

Tahno lingered behind. He gave the excuse that he had pulled a muscle in his shoulder and needed to stretch some more before he left. Mako suggested he see the athletic trainer. Tahno said the trainer wasn't going to be in for another ten minutes and that he needed to stay close. Bolin looked about ready to toss Tahno out the door, but the threat of disqualification physically held him back. Tahno asked with mock politeness if he could watch them practice until then, but sat down by the door and ignored Mako's answer. Mako suspected that Tahno's "injury" was a ploy to get a look at the Fire Ferrets before the game began—after yesterday's close match, Tahno must have started to take the underdog team a little more seriously. Mako had almost expected Tahno to make an appearance, though not this early in the morning. Probably Tahno was just looking to rile them up before they could get a footing on practice. They certainly weren't going to go over any plays with him sitting here.

They followed their morning routine as if Tahno were not scrutinizing them from the corner. Korra guzzled her tea (Mako made her another when she continued to look sleepy; this she accepted with a smile and mumbled word of thanks), Bolin switched the radio station to the news, and all parties ignored Tahno when he made a snide comment about having distractions at practice. If Tahno was looking to see the Fire Ferrets' best moves, he walked away disappointed. First Korra struggled to warm up. Then Bolin had to stop midway through drills to use the toilet. And finally, when they had fallen into a comfortable tempo, the next news story began.

The talk show host opened up with a recap of the story that had broken late last night. In the aftermath of Amon's rally, during which most of the key members of the Triple Threat Triad gang had lost their Bending and disappeared, the police spent weeks preparing for a massive raid on the rest of the gang. The start of this story stopped all three Fire Ferrets mid-stance, and for three different reasons. The brothers shared an anxious glance. Tahno asked what the big deal was. Ignoring him, Mako told everyone to keep working and warned that if they couldn't focus with the radio on, it would have to go off. The host went on. He enlightened the audience as to the nature of the raid, including a statement from Chief Bei Fong on their apparent success. The police had shown up to several locations affiliated with the gang, and had uncovered several major crime spots in a complex of abandoned factory buildings. In one building, the police found several stores of illegal drugs and weapons. Another of the buildings appeared to be an abandoned brothel.

"—the Chief says that as soon as it got out Lightning Bolt Zolt was kaput, witnesses came flocking to the police with reports that they had been threatened or abused by the Triple Threat Triad," said the host. "I do not envy Lin Bei Fong today, my friends; let me tell you she is up to her ears in testimony from all over Republic City. Earlier this morning you heard one man's story, of how the gang threatened his family when he couldn't come up with the money for some illegally traded weapons. Now we have a different sort of guest altogether. This young woman's name is Mara, and _she_ claims that the gang trapped her in some sort of prostitution-drug cycle. Say good morning, Mara, you're on the air—"

Off to the side, Tahno groaned his annoyance. He asked if they could just stop it with the radio, but Korra snapped that if he didn't want to listen, he was as close to the door as he could get without falling backwards out of it. Privately, Mako would rather kill the volume as well; but both Bolin and Korra had all but stopped working to listen. They got back to Bending when Mako resumed his stance and began shooting at the net, but their focus had shifted.

The twenty-six year old explained how she had become addicted to drugs and alcohol at a young age, gotten kicked out of her home, and turned to the Triple Threats to feed her habit. She said that they had soon trapped her in a cycle of poverty. They offered her drugs and cash in exchange for sexual favors, and within weeks they had begun withholding payment. To get her fair share, said the girl in a quiet tone, she became something of a slave. She reported to the factory building many times a week, where she was beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted by clients. There was nothing she could do. At first she tried to get out of it, but soon the gang had made her believe that this was the only path for her.

"I met some women over the years who chose this job over something else," said the girl. "Some of them were perfectly okay with it, but none of them were Zolt's girls. _We_ lived like prisoners, and most of us were kids. Mostly girls. They told us we weren't worth anything else, and after a while we believed them."

The radio host let out an audible sigh before asking, gently, "And what is it you plan to do now that you're out in the open? Are you going to press charges?"

"Yes," said the girl. "Right now I'm still trying to get clean—the police helped me find somewhere to live and get help—but as soon as I can do it, I'm suing the gang for everything they've done to m—"

The radio faded to a buzz and then went silent. Mako whipped around to see Tahno standing there with the electrical cord dangling from one hand. Bolin demanded to know what Tahno thought he was doing. Tahno said he couldn't stand to listen to this drivel anymore. It was simple, he said. If the chick hadn't fumbled up her own life, she wouldn't be in this situation. The whole case was just the government wasting money on a useless angle. Last time he checked, prostitution was perfectly legal in Republic City. What this girl did was a perfectly legal transaction—she screwed some guys, she got paid, and then she wasted her money on drugs. If she really wanted to get out of it, he said, she could have gotten a regular job like everyone else.

Korra told him he was being rude and needed to leave, but he didn't relent. He said everyone was ignoring common sense and letting liars run the law.

"If the police really wanted to pinch the gang, they'd hit them on the drug trafficking," said Tahno. "It's just stupid. Everyone knows you can't rape a whore."

Mako opened his mouth to shout, but closed it again for fear of saying something regrettable. Part of him thought he ought to be more upset, but his internal switch had flipped at the sound of Mara's name and his space for feelings had been wiped mercifully blank. Bolin moved as if to go after Tahno, but stutter-stopped to a halt when his brother raised a hand. Then Mako saw a flash of blue as Korra stomped past him, pointing to the door and shouting for Tahno to get his ass out before she kicked him out. Mako yelled for Korra to stop, that he was baiting them. Dropping the cord, Tahno raised his hands in mock defense. He wished them luck and had ducked out of the door before Korra could get close enough to throttle him. A few seconds of silence passed at the slamming of the door until Korra, turning slowly, crossed her arms and announced that they weren't allowed to have guests at practice anymore.

xXx

They lost the match. Years of training went to waste on cheating referees and foul play. Yet despite this blow—and the loss of their home, which they knew for a pitifully short time—Mako found he only gave those facets a passing thought. Amon had ascended. The game had changed. Suddenly the whole city's priorities had changed, and Mako's along with them.

At eighteen, Mako learned about true friendship and began to suspect he might not deserve it. He was only self-loathing in that he resented his life situation and his inability to do more about it. Otherwise he criticized himself only for that which he perceived he could control—his now profoundly unbalanced feelings for Avatar Korra, for example. The events leading up to and following Hiroshi's underground renegade fiasco proved just the sort to make Mako take a good look inward. The type of friendship Korra wanted was hardly a cousin to the friendship that Mako knew. Growing up he had had friends, of course. As a child he had run around the park with other street kids, playing games when safety and sustenance weren't issues. In his teenage years Mako found companionship with the night crew and Nikka. As an adult he was friendly with some of the other Pro Benders and those of Republic City's homeless population who had made it thus far.

But being friends with someone, in Mako's experience, meant something different than what Korra knew. It meant giving someone a friendly nod even if you were in a foul mood from hunger, or chatting with someone enough to care about their life and what they had to say. On rare occasions it meant offering shelter up when someone was in need, or—almost never—food to someone when they were closer to death than yourself. A friend was one or all of these things, yet Mako would not hesitate to ditch them if they made trouble. Life was already too complicated without the added burden of entertaining those who could interfere with Mako's plan. And Mako never worried about having his throat cut as long as he held others an arm's length away.

This was the ultimatum that Mako had given to Korra—leave him in peace or be left behind. It was easier to ignore his craving for her company than to let it ruin the progress he'd made toward security. And yet, even after he treated Korra poorly, even after she turned out to be right and could have used this victory to torment him, instead she did something that Mako had never expected: she offered shelter and food to Mako, Bolin, and Asami, and she did it free of charge.

Guilt hounded Mako all the way to Air Temple Island. He did not deserve such unconditional friendship—not after the way he had treated his brother, his friend, his girlfriend, all without real apology. He was wary of it, what it might mean to the boy who had only ever had one mission in his life. With Asami he still had a chance at fulfilling that plan, The Plan, but as time wore on he began to see that this wouldn't do. No doubt his past experiences made his actions understandable, even sympathetic, but they did not make them okay. No longer was he under the immediate threat of death or starvation. It was time to start acting like it—to be a little kinder and a little less cynical toward those he called his 'friends'. Even as Mako reminded himself of this, the pang in his gut recalled that his mainstreaming efforts weren't admirable thus far.

Korra's kidnapping only made this more apparent. Somewhere inside of him, the guilt had latched on to his inhibitions and began to rust them through. When he heard that Korra was gone, that rusted knob broke and the valve opened up, spilling his doubts like blood through his fingers. He'd thought it would be easier to abandon his misguided feelings with Korra. He had been wrong. Now that she was gone and her opinion of him clear, he felt a crazed need to see her again. Mako was just as selfish as ever, the same as when he'd cheated on Asami and hoarded Korra away from Bolin. And though this time he knew it, he didn't even start to care until Korra was safely back on Air Temple Island. He had never felt this way before, and hesitated to admit that it was what he lacked with Asami. If _this_ was love—this frantic drive, a nausea-inducing anxiety that dwindled long after her safe recovery—then Mako didn't want it. Things could be so much easier if only he didn't have it. But there it was.

Korra slept for over a day, Mako leaving her bedside only when he had no choice. The aftermath of her rescue had left Mako with plenty of time to sit and contemplate what he'd done. Once again, without hesitation, he had done wrong by those who cared about him when his task-oriented brain had set itself on her rescue. Currently he was pretending not to notice the tension that had sprung up between himself and Asami like a weed. He wasn't sure that he could deal with that just yet. Bolin, too, looked more nervous than usual…

Mako glanced down when he heard Korra breathe a long sigh. It was the first sound she'd made since passing out on the sky bison's back the night before. He leaned forward and, gently pressing her chin between his thumb and forefinger, turned her face to examine the healing wounds. Pema had done a marvelous job with the limited supplies they carried on the island. Probably mending the cuts and scrapes of three children had something to do with it, especially given that one of them behaved more like a wild animal. Mako propped his chin on the heel of one hand and brushed the hair from Korra's eyes with the other. For some reason he expected her skin to shock him with cold, yet beneath his rough fingers there was only a calm heat. She would make it through this just fine. For him to even consider otherwise was an insult to her character.

At the far end of the room, the door slid open and in stepped a new visitor. The last person to peek in had been Pema, who kicked Mako out to re-dress Korra's wounds and left a bowl of crackers when she departed. This new guest made Mako sit upright in his chair despite the heaviness in his back and shoulders. Though their paths had crossed in the last few weeks, Mako had not spoken directly to the Chief of Police since he was fifteen.

Lin Bei Fong strode to the opposite side of Korra's bed and looked down on the sleeping Avatar with clinical interest. She asked how Korra was recovering, and Mako replied that she was healing better than they'd hoped. Lin nodded once, just a dip of her chin down and back to center. Then she spotted Mako's hand sitting atop Korra's and frowned.

"Aren't you with the Sato girl?" she said impassively. Mako nodded. Bei Fong opened her mouth to speak, looking very much as if she had an opinion to express, but seemed to reconsider just after taking the breath to say it.

A silence ensued. Both parties stared expressionlessly at the other for almost a full minute before the Chief spoke again.

"I was in charge of your parents' investigation, you know," she said. Mako paused, almost suspicious by his own lack of response. He nodded. He remembered what she'd said at the police station when he was eight years old and too young to doubt her: that she would do her best to bring this murderer to justice by whatever means she had to.

"I never was able to find that man, and after the case went cold there was nothing I could do. I always meant to apologize for that."

Again, Mako kept silent. He shrugged one shoulder in dismissal of her concern, willing her not to dwell on it any longer. They'd made it without them. His parents—he had their faces, painted in a blue as if he had dreamed them, and he hardly remembered their voices. If not for the scarf around his neck, he might just believe that he and Bolin had always been alone.

Lin didn't seem satisfied with his response.

"And everything you've had to do to keep yourselves alive, I'm sorry for that too. I can't even begin to imagine it."

"Don't be sorry," said Mako, suddenly finding his voice where it had been stoppered in his throat. "Nobody else gave us any pity when we needed it; we got here on our own. It's not worth it to be sorry." He hesitated when Lin kept staring at him, with that same knowing look she'd given him when he was fifteen and in prison. She offered him remorse, but it was in her words and not borne across her face. Mako continued on, in a steadier tone that he'd thought he could manage. "I'm not ashamed of what I did, or what happened to me. Even if it marks me for the rest of my life, I don't care. I did what I had to do."

"Does your brother—"

"No." Mako shook his head. "Bolin wouldn't understand. If he knew that's how I bought his food and clothes, he'd…" Frustrated, Mako shook his head again. "He can never know."

"You have my silence. But that boy's a lot smarter than he lets on," said Lin, raising a brow. "I think he'd understand. Not that it's any of my business."

Lin left Mako where she found him, sharing a grim nod before she turned and headed out of the room. When the click of the door stopped resounding in his ears, Mako was left alone with his thoughts.

Later that night, after the inhabitants of the island had finished dinner, the brothers offered to wash the dishes so that Pema could get off of her feet for the night. The two of them worked silently in the dim kitchen, the sound of water in the sink almost drowning out the waves outside. Mako worked quickly, piling dishes in the soapy water faster than Bolin could scrub them. If Korra should wake up, he wanted to be there so that she would not have to be alone.

After some minutes of work, Bolin mentioned that that the girl whose case had been on the radio would start tomorrow in the lower level courts. He'd read it in the evening paper while Mako was with Korra. Bolin said that for a while he had forgotten that life was still going on as normal in the city while theirs had stopped for a while. Even though he'd always known the gang was a group of criminals, they could be quite friendly once you knew them. Sometimes it was hard to believe they were the same crowd that beat up Mako, and the radio broadcast they heard during practice reminded him how he had felt then.

Bolin asked if Mako knew about all the horrible things the Triple Threats had done to those people. Mako had done the bookkeeping, after all, and knew the different departments. Drying the last supper plate, Mako said that he'd had an inkling. The book was full of code names so it was almost impossible to know who did what. Mako and Bolin didn't speak until they had wiped down the counter and stowed the dishes. Then, when Mako hung the dishrag on its peg, Bolin asked if he was doing all right. Mako said that he was fine and that they ought to get to sleep now.

"Asami said you've been having nightmares," said Bolin in a rush, his posture braced against an oncoming argument. "We weren't talking about you or anything! She just… mentioned it, and asked if she should be worried."

"It's nothing, just stress," Mako said. He hadn't had any dreams at all since the Equalists raided the tournament. He'd hardly slept enough to dream.

"So you know about it?"

"Of course I do. I'm fine. Neither of you should be worried."

"But I am!" Bolin sighed, looking defeated as he rubbed his eyes. "Listen, I know I'm a deep sleeper, but I'm pretty sure this hasn't happened for years."

"What do you mean, 'for years'?"

"Well, I mean… back when you were first working for the gang, before you got promoted, you used to have these… nightmares, I guess. Bad dreams."

Mako said he didn't remember ever having bad dreams. Bolin said that was because Mako always seemed to forget them by the morning.

"You'd just sit up all of a sudden like you were wide awake, but you'd be sweaty and shaking and breathing like you were having a panic attack. I always tried to talk you down, but… you just looked right through me, like I wasn't even there." Bolin shuddered. "At first I thought you just didn't want to talk about it. After a while I realized you didn't remember."

Mako stared. He opened his mouth to speak, struggled to find his words, and finally, baffled, asked why Bolin hadn't told him.

"Because it would just make things worse! You were already dealing with so much," Bolin said. "And if could help you at least _think _you'd gotten a good night's sleep, then I was gonna do it."

"Bo, I'm so sorry," said Mako.

Suddenly he was even more ashamed of his nightmares. His selfish fears and desires had once again caused unnecessary harm to his only family. He may not have asked for all these changing relationships and complications, but he had them and had failed to do right by them. Chief Bei Fong had been right to look at him as she had, when she opened her mouth to criticize him but decided not to bother.

Bolin, wonderfully merciful, asked Mako why he would be sorry for something he couldn't control. Mako struggled to find the right way to answer.

"It's not just that, it's—I haven't been a very good brother lately. I haven't been a very good _person_, and I haven't been around for you as much as I should, even before all this stuff with Korra, and I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry," said Bolin, forcing a smile. "Yeah, I've missed having you around all the time since you started dating Asami, but I like her! It's nice to see you… happy."

The final word fell flat between them, as if the chaos of the last few days had tripped it on its way out of Bolin's mouth. Bolin knew, of course he did. Granted, the kiss had been an obvious indicator, but the tone of his voice suggested something else, too; even if he hadn't known about Korra, he'd known about Asami long before Mako figured it out. Bolin often ignored life's harsher memos, but with Mako he never missed a thing. Almost never, anyway.

Mako was always amazed that Bolin had survived their childhood in the way he had—fighting through it with unconditional optimism and his heart light—but he was glad one of them had survived more or less intact. It gave Mako purpose when he felt useless, hope when he thought they might be better off someplace else. But it was a tricky relationship, and though he knew Bolin would always forgive him, Mako resolved to limit the need for such selflessness.

The brothers simultaneously realized they'd been standing in silence. Bolin shifted his weight to his heels and back, offering up one of those crooked half-grins. He sighed heavily and announced that tomorrow was a new day and that they should get to sleep. He said not to worry if Mako heard him puking in the middle night—he wasn't hung over this time, just terrified of Amon and Tarrlok. Mako chuckled.

"We'll be all right," he said, and offered a hand. "Win or no win, we'll be all right."

"Thanks to you," said Bolin.

He grasped Mako's hand, then pulled his brother over and hugged him tight, lifting him easily into the air. When he set him back down, Mako first had to blink the spots out of his eyes. He thought of what Tahno had said, how so few words had brought him back to the lowest moments of his life. He thought of all the times he'd come limping back to the shelter feeling like a dying animal, like a throwaway, only to find Bolin waiting there for him as if he actually mattered. He thought of Bolin in the library as a child, learning how to read. Bolin stepping between Mako and Pabu, studying his carefully-sketched Bending forms, tossing an icepack to his wounded brother, always watching but never judging. Growing up, Mako kept them fed. Bolin had kept them alive.

Mako set a hand on his little brother's shoulder.

"Thanks to _you_," he said.

xXx

_End._

xXx

* * *

A/n: Thanks again for reading! Wherewulf (my lovely beta) and I wrestled a little over the ending, but this is what we ultimately wound up with. There's so much more that happens in the actual canon story after this scene, but I wanted to leave you with a moment of peace instead - one that is hopeful for the brothers, but probably a bit ominous to you, who knows what happens next.

Anyway, thanks to the wonderful reviewers of this story, who kept me posting when I'd rather just hide: **whisper**, **Sapphire Leo**, **Constance Bonacieux**, , **Inky Perspective**, **wherewulf**, **ShadowWalker NightCrawler2**, **Ecchi Blanket**, **somebody's world**, and several anonymous reviewers. Thanks also to those who left kind messages for me on Tumblr (for the curious and or bored: Tumblr username is also Invaderk). I wouldn't have wanted to do it without you!


End file.
